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 772 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Jenni Minto
I will follow on from Dr Allan’s first question. I represent Argyll and Bute and have been out and about in the constituency in the past couple of weeks. We have heard a lot about individuals offering accommodation. I am interested in any work that you are doing with businesses. A number of hospitality businesses have written to me to say that they have accommodation and would love to welcome Ukrainians and that they can also offer them work. What have local authorities been doing to connect with businesses that can offer a warm welcome?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Jenni Minto
Ms Chisholm, you have talked about working with third sector organisations, and I am sure that there was a lot of learning from the Covid recovery and resilience groups that were set up across Scotland. I would be interested if you could expand on that at all.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Jenni Minto
In your opening statement, you touched on the experience that Scotland has gained from other crises. Like Clare Adamson’s constituency, my constituency of Argyll and Bute welcomed Syrian families. What have we learned from that, and how might that shape the way that we welcome Ukrainian families?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Jenni Minto
Will you explain a bit more about what happens at the welcome hubs and what the families or individuals who arrive can expect?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Jenni Minto
One of the witnesses on the previous panel talked about co-ordination of the different schemes and how things were being co-ordinated if there was a concern about Ukrainians coming in on one scheme and perhaps in another, as well.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Jenni Minto
That is great. In our previous evidence session, Marie Hayes from the Red Cross talked about the importance of allowing children to become children again and to give them space.
When we had the consul general of Ukraine at the committee a couple of weeks ago, he talked about Ukraine’s education system and the fact that so much education can be provided online. Is that being brought in? We want the children to be welcomed into our schools, but their culture and education should be considered. Have you had discussions about that?
11:00Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Jenni Minto
As has just been said, it is very powerful when we get specific examples, so thank you for sharing those with us.
I represent Argyll and Bute, and the island of Bute welcomed Syrian families. When I spoke to a third sector organisation about lessons that have been learned from that scheme, mention was made of the additional benefits that the community received. For example, there was an Incredible Edible scheme, where Syrian families came and brought their ways of cooking vegetables. That was a good and cohesive project.
One concern that was raised with me was that, although Argyll and Bute Council did a fantastic job and, for example, provided a lot of support for learning English, there was perhaps a lack of recognition that people learn at different speeds. For example, the younger people learned very quickly, whereas the older people in families were a bit slower. I was interested in Andy Sirel’s points about form filling and getting through the different procedures. What are your thoughts on what we have learned and what we can do better? I ask Marie Hayes to start.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Jenni Minto
Your last point ties into a conversation that I had earlier this week about whether if a rural community welcomes Ukrainian families from a similar setting they will perhaps integrate better. Rather than people going from the city centre of Mariupol to Glendaruel in Argyll and Bute, for example, perhaps we could match people to settings that are similar to those that they are fleeing from. Your point was very helpful.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Draft Joint Fisheries Statement
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Jenni Minto
In her introduction, Elaine Whyte mentioned that there are difference resources across the different inshore fishery areas and that regional areas differ across Scotland. In your most recent answer, you talked about the need for communities to diversify their catch. Will you expand on that? How could the JFS provide opportunities in that regard? Perhaps Charles Millar has thoughts on that, too.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Draft Joint Fisheries Statement
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Jenni Minto
Thanks, Paul.
The Scottish Government has recently published proposals on a future catching policy and remote electronic monitoring. How will those proposals contribute to the science and innovation aims that are set out in the JFS?
