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 1953 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I will take you back to the closure of the Clyde cod box. Members of the party that is in government now called for fishermen to be compensated after the new measures were introduced to protect cod stocks in the Firth of Clyde. You talked about decommissioning and a just transition. Would you support compensation for individuals who have been displaced?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Do you have examples of where restrictions exist on fishing similar to those proposed in the petition and where topography makes it harder for smaller fishing boats to adapt to being displaced further afield? What do you believe might be the impact of the 3-mile limit?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I am just wondering what you would say to the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, which argues that the 3-mile limit is a “protectionist” approach that benefits
“only one type of fishing”.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Okay. I want to go back to some of the points that you made about the socioeconomic benefits that the measures in the petition could bring. Do you believe that the price of nephrops would increase, pricing us out of the domestic market and leading to the replacement of our domestic market by foreign imports?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Do you expect to have to produce a financial impact assessment, whether negative or positive, alongside your petition?
11:15Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Mr Philp, when you get back to the committee on the 58 per cent figure that you used, could you clarify whether that relates to areas where trawling happens or the assessed areas, please? You do not need to answer now, but you could add that in.
I want to ask about the backing that you have for your petition. It states that it was submitted by you on behalf of the SCFF. Do all your members support the petition?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Inquiry into Race Inequality in Scotland
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
No, because my original question, which was about running for office here, was for Farah Farzana, and she has made a point about that.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Inquiry into Race Inequality in Scotland
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Yes. Danny Boyle has just popped out of the room, but it is interesting that he said that the pandemic had an effect on race inequality. I am trying to tease out whether you believe that the pandemic has set equality back. We are talking about unemployment. We know that people from ethnic communities were twice as likely to be unemployed, twice as likely to be living in poverty and four times as likely to be living in overcrowded conditions. First, do you believe that the pandemic caused setbacks in progress, if there was progress before the pandemic? Secondly, do you believe that there should be a cross-sectional approach to all those issues of housing, unemployment and poverty?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Inquiry into Race Inequality in Scotland
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Yes. Danny, you said that the pandemic had affected many of what we might call the targets and outcomes, although you did not use those words. In 2016, figures showed that people from ethnic communities were twice as likely to be unemployed or to live in poverty and four times as likely to live in overcrowded conditions. Prior to the pandemic, had any progress been made through interventions such as the Scottish Government’s race equality action plan?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Inquiry into Race Inequality in Scotland
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
If there had been progress on the commitment to setting an agenda, do you believe that the pandemic has set that back or has it brought such issues into focus again?
