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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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 2063 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I have one more small question. I am not sure whether other members will mention this, but we have spatial squeeze right now. The renewable offshore energy sector is presenting challenges for the future of fishing. Do you have concerns about spatial squeeze on top of the restrictions that you want to bring in through your petition?
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
Are those 200 active fisher people?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I go back to my question about your possibly demonstrating a similar example somewhere else in Scotland, such as the Moray firth. What impact has there been in terms of the different topography?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
We need to take displacement very seriously. Off the Wash, it has been demonstrated that the topography has displaced smaller fishermen, who have had to go further out to protect their livelihoods. There could be arguments on both sides.
Your argument is that we should have a transition鈥攚e will discuss that later in the questioning鈥攁nd that we almost have to make a sacrifice. Is that what you are saying? That argument does not stand up, does it? In relation to the example of Norway and the Norwegian fleets, the restrictions are put in place not for conservation reasons but to restrict gear conflicts.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
The petitioner gave compelling evidence and answered our questions well, but the scope of the petition requires a multi-approach strategy. The Government needs to ensure that it is working on the issues that the petitioner raised, where there is a glaring deficit in meeting targets. For example, he said that, without a comprehensive inshore management plan, we are blind and that the Government should be responsible for ensuring that we look at the financial impact of what the petition suggests. The Government can do a lot more. I recommend that the petition be closed at this point.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Inquiry into Race Inequality in Scotland
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Are you saying that you would like to see a UK-wide housing policy?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Inquiry into Race Inequality in Scotland
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I want to follow up on points that Pinar Aksu and Graham O鈥橬eill made. Why do Ukrainian refugees who have come to Scotland to settle find it hard to access social and rented housing and healthcare? What experience does the Scottish Refugee Council have of supporting such individuals?
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?
