Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Displaying 1000 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
David Torrance
I would probably disagree when it comes to Fife Council. The best example that I can give is that, when people are off for summer holidays for seven weeks, all the community halls are shut.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Borders and NHS Forth Valley)
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
David Torrance
Yes.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Borders and NHS Forth Valley)
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
David Torrance
We have talked about stress and burnout, but what are you putting in place for the wellbeing of your staff? I do not mean anything related to profession and careers, but what is in place for the wellbeing of your staff so that they continue—
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
David Torrance
How would you get women to participate in sports, especially when there is good weather?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
David Torrance
It happens with a lot of clubs. I play walking football, and we have had a long-term booking at a time that is accessible to us all. Any other groups, especially female groups, that come in now are getting times late at night—the 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock bookings.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
David Torrance
Good morning, everybody.
How can community sports facilities be improved to allow female participation? For example, on booking times, a lot of community facilities have long-term bookings from males, and as female participation in sports such as football has increased, women have found it very difficult to get into community facilities. How can we improve that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
David Torrance
I am thinking especially of local authority community centres. In many cases, they are shut at weekends and those groups find it difficult to get into facilities like that to participate.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
David Torrance
I was wondering whether the patient safety commissioner role would evolve into having such powers.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
David Torrance
Could social media be used better by Government organisations to promote positive role models and support for young women? I am thinking about TikTok, which is where a lot of young people get their role models. We only need to think about an influencer and what they managed to do with a certain juice product. I was interested to see on the BBC last night the agency that is the top influencer on women in Scotland. It has a huge following but none of it is to do with sport; it is all to do with clothes and image. Is there a place for social media that could really impact on young people?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
David Torrance
There are positive aspects to social media, but there are negative ones, too, as many of us know. To what extent do you feel that the impact of social media fitness content on young women’s body image has changed since the “Young Women Lead” report was published, and in what ways?
