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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 737 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Brian Whittle
I will follow on from Murdo Fraser’s question about what could be in the bill. Dr MacPherson’s response leads me back to the issue of those who lack legal capacity, how they are currently treated in law and whether they should be liable for interest and charges on loan payments in such circumstances. Is that something that the bill could deal with?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Brian Whittle
Before I get into lender responsibility, I will hand over to you, convener.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Brian Whittle
Many people who find themselves in that situation hunker down and do not look for advice. Is there room in the bill to address that, Katie McLachlan?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Brian Whittle
David Menzies, I will throw something else into the mix as we try to complicate this as much as we can.
One of the things that concern me about some of the responses that we have had is that we seem to be almost driven to put something in legislation by the fact that the advice sector is stretched. Where is the balance to be struck? I think that we all agree that the best scenario is earlier intervention that prevents people from getting to that position. However, we are discussing the matter as part of a bill, so that is obviously not the case. What is your opinion on how we deal with that in the bill? Should we deal with it in the bill?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Brian Whittle
Thank you, convener. As recorded in the register of members’ interests, I am a director of a small business consultancy, which, from time to time, I do a little bit of work for outside parliamentary time.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Brian Whittle
Good morning. A couple of things have popped out from Maggie Chapman and Colin Smyth’s discussions with the witnesses. The process that leads to debt recovery tends to be rather protracted and results in what you might call an increasing level of urgency in the interaction between creditor and debtor, which, in and of itself, is stressful—perhaps for both parties but certainly for the person in debt.
10:15There is the idea of a gatekeeper and of how we assess those who are in debt. Should the bill include provisions on how debtors might receive financial advice and at what stage they might receive that? Should we be better at ensuring that debtors understand what advice is available to them? I put that to Barry Mochan.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Recovery of NHS Dental Services
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Brian Whittle
I will go back to something that you said, Mr Ferris, about encouraging people from overseas to come and work here. You said that we had brought in 50 Polish dentists. I have a moral issue with that in that we are sucking talent from everywhere else and, while we are doing that, we are allowing our own talent to leave or to work privately and not in NHS dentistry. Do you see what I am getting at? Should we not focus more on how we retain our own talent within NHS dentistry?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Recovery of NHS Dental Services
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Brian Whittle
Minister, it does not matter how many dentists are in training. If they do not want to go into NHS dentistry, it will make no difference whatsoever. Over and above that, we have heard that a lot of dentists’ staff are moving to private practice, purely for financial reasons because private practice can pay more.
We have to understand what the problem is before we can fix it. My concern is that we are hearing one side of the argument, and then what we hear from you differs so much from that that I am not sure what the reality is, although I am not sure what my colleagues think.
We have heard that the NHS is under huge pressure across the board, and dentistry seems to be at the worst end of that. It is to the point where someone said that it is in danger of falling over. We have to accept what the reality is. You talk about the idea that we need more dentists, but what we need is more NHS dentists. How do we get more NHS dentists to practice?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Recovery of NHS Dental Services
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Brian Whittle
I have a final question. We have heard not only that there can be a long delay in getting payment for treatments that have been done but that some treatments on the NHS actually cost the dentist money to deliver. Are you looking at that issue?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Recovery of NHS Dental Services
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Brian Whittle
Good morning, minister. I have been listening with interest to what has been said and reflecting on the view of dentistry that has been portrayed, which is markedly different from the evidence that we have heard before. As a committee, we have to assess the evidence that is before us. As my colleague Jackie Baillie said, dentists have repeatedly talked about wanting to look at prevention, which you will know is a passion of mine. They have also said that there is no immediate strategy or capacity to clear the backlog or take immediate action on poor oral health. In fact, last week, we heard from dentists that, under the current system, the backlog will never be cleared. The concern for me is the huge gulf between the evidence that we are hearing today and the evidence that we have heard over the past couple of weeks.
I will mention a couple of things. One is that, because of the big gaps between dental appointments, the treatment that dentists are having to provide is much more complex, which is an indication of a problem. The other is that dentists get paid when treatment is finished, which is a problem when it takes longer to complete treatment. For example, if there is an initial appointment, a filling that is done after three months and another filling that is done after another three months, the dentist is not paid for six months. Dentists say that the system cannot continue.
If we are going to fix this, which I think that we all want to do, we have to understand the reality. The evidence that the committee has heard has painted an NHS dentistry system that, as John Mason said, students have said that they do not want to work in. We know that current NHS dentists are drifting towards the private sector. Help us here, minister. How do we close the gulf between what you are saying and the evidence that we have heard?
