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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 1351 contributions
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COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
Thank you, deputy convener. I apologise to everyone for my late arrival, which is due to my having to deal with another matter. I also apologise if I should repeat any questions.
I thank Dr Isabel Fletcher for her written evidence, which was based on research conducted by her and Professor Catherine Lyall. It noted some interesting things, such as:
“In crisis situations, people initially turn to their existing networks for assistance with unexpected and urgent tasks.”
It also highlighted that
“the climate crisis will result in increasing threats to human health (including future pandemics) demanding responses that span public health, animal health and environment. This, in turn, will require more joined-up approaches with effective day-to-day working relationships”
with the Scottish Government and other agencies.
My colleague John Mason said that it was suggested that there would be benefit in creating a post of chief scientist for public health. Are there any other ways in which such approaches could be co-ordinated by the Government?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
That is helpful. Thank you.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
That is really helpful.
I will move to my next question. Do you feel that Scotland is well placed at the moment for any future pandemics, as well as for any other threats, such as antimicrobial resistance?
10:30COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Covid-19 Surveillance
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
Good morning, and welcome back. I apologise again for being late this morning. We have received apologies from Alex Rowley.
We continue to take evidence on Covid-19 surveillance. Our second panel of witnesses will be giving evidence on genomic sequencing. I welcome to the meeting Professor Sharon Peacock CBE, executive director and chair of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, who joins us remotely; Mike Gray, service manager for laboratory medicine at NHS Lothian; who joins us in person; Dr Kate Templeton, head of molecular diagnostics in microbiology, virology and molecular pathology, and director of the sexually transmitted infections and viral genotyping reference laboratory at the royal infirmary of Edinburgh—that is a mouthful; Professor Rory Gunson, consultant clinical scientist, and virology clinical lead and laboratory director of the west of Scotland specialist virology centre at Glasgow royal infirmary, who joins us remotely too; and Professor Matthew Holden, COG-UK principal investigator at Public Health Scotland.
Welcome, everybody. I thank you for giving us your time this morning, and for your recent submissions. We estimate that the session will run up to about 11.20, and each member should have between 12 and 15 minutes to ask their questions of the panel.
For the witnesses who are attending remotely, if you would like to respond to an issue that is being discussed, you can just type an R in the chat box and I will try to bring you in. I am keen to ensure that everybody gets an opportunity to speak, but I apologise in advance in case, if time runs on too much, I have to interrupt members or witnesses in the interests of brevity.
I invite the witnesses to introduce themselves briefly, starting with Professor Sharon Peacock.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
Good morning, and welcome to the COVID-19 Recovery Committee’s 27th meeting in 2022. This morning, we will conclude our evidence taking for our inquiry into the pandemic’s impact on the Scottish labour market.
I welcome from the Scottish Government Richard Lochhead, the Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work; Lewis Hedge, deputy director, fair work and labour market strategy; and Dr Alastair Cook, principal medical officer, mental health division. Before we ask questions, would the minister like to make brief opening remarks?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
We are running short of time, but on the same subject, the national strategy for economic transformation included a commitment to launch the centre for workplace transformation, which would give employees guidance on flexible working. Can the minister or Lewis Hedge give us an update on that?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
That would be great, because the committee has a keen interest in hybrid and flexible working.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
I will move on to Jim Fairlie, but first I have a quick question regarding the local employability partnerships that have been rolled out in the past 12 months. Is there funding from the Scottish Government to all 32 local authorities, which they can allocate to a team?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
Thank you. That is interesting. I will have to see what South Ayrshire is doing.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
In the new year, the committee will be doing an inquiry into long Covid specifically, because the issue has been raised during this inquiry. Inclusion Scotland highlighted that long Covid is not necessarily considered a disability. I appreciate and understand that a lot of people with long Covid are self-diagnosed, and that there is a lot of work still to be done and a lot that is unknown. It is not one of the conditions that is listed in the Equality Act 2010. Does the Scottish Government have a view on whether long Covid should be recognised as a disability?
