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 1119 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
Mr Strang raised a really important point about availability of support in the community, particularly on Fridays, in the critical risk period following liberation, and Dr Hunter raised a point about community pharmacy availability and utilising that network more readily to support people. We have mentioned naloxone. It is clear that there is an effort from the Scottish Government and the health and social care partnership in Glasgow, in particular, to launch an official overdose prevention pilot in Glasgow. Do you have a view about how such a facility might assist people who have been liberated from prison and do not necessarily have a safe place to go? It could be a key interface for people who are in the justice system and being liberated. Could that add value?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
Yes.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
Dr Hunter, do you have any comments?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
I believe that Dr Neal has drafted the relevant amendment, so it is a question of offering it for the Government to adopt. I note, too, that Mr Tidy mentioned that
“amending the Sentencing Council’s guidelines for judges might be a more immediate goal”.—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 9 November 2022; c 16.]
That is worth noting as a potential action that we can recommend.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
Yes, I think that that would be helpful.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
On Mr Ewing’s point, the important thing to focus on is TFL’s submission, which discusses a technological solution that would deliver on the petitioner’s request. The question then is why ScotRail is reticent to adopt such technology, when it is clearly deliverable in other jurisdictions in the UK and internationally. I am not convinced by its response.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
I thank Monica Lennon MSP for coming along today and offering such a compelling account of why the petition is so important and why the committee should consider it.
I was struck by the submissions from Transport Scotland and Transport for London. According to Transport Scotland,
“ScotRail delivered a pilot for Account Based Ticketing ... allowing for fare capping and tap in/tap out technology. The pilot took place on the Cathcart Circle ... for a period of four months and although proving to be a good customer proposition it was deemed unsuccessful on commercial grounds. Since ScotRail has been transferred to public ownership ... an account based ticketing trial has been included within its business plan”.
I am not satisfied with that response. It is totally inadequate, particularly when viewed in contrast with the submission from Transport for London, which says:
“The core principle of our fares system is to make it as simple as possible”.
TFL has a “best value promise” that,
“when travelling using pay as you go ... on Oyster or contactless”
debit or credit card,
“customers just need to touch in and out when travelling on our services and we ensure that customers pay the cheapest fare for the journeys they make.”
The cheapest fare is no more than the cost of the equivalent travel card, and there is an automatic refund when a journey has not been completed. The contrast between the two submissions is striking—it is night and day. It is the greatest contrast between submissions to the committee that I have seen in recent times, and I think that there is an opportunity for the committee to probe further.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
I take your point entirely, and I think that it is really important. Anecdotally, from my experience in representing Barlinnie, the largest prison in Scotland, and having visited it on several occasions, prison officers have described to me quite candidly that they have repeat customers who they liberate on a Friday, who then go into the city centre to shoplift, purchase and take drugs—usually in an unsafe way—and who will likely then be arrested and back in prison on the following Monday. Those people are, in effect, serving life sentences in short bursts.
When I participated in the unofficial overdose prevention pilot in Glasgow, we frequently had people turning up to the ambulance who had just come straight from Barlinnie prison or Low Moss prison and were seeking a safe place to inject.
You made a very important recommendation, but I want to know whether there has been any indication from the Government that it considers that recommendation to be an urgent action that it is willing to expedite. Are there any indications of the timescales for adjustments?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
That is certainly helpful for when we come to future evidence sessions. Would Dr Hunter like to make any points in relation to my questions?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Paul Sweeney
That is a helpful contribution, as we need to hone in on what practical measures would be most effective.
Dr Neal, your points about the Scottish Law Commission and the idea of a members’ bill are helpful, too, and I agree with your reasoning in that regard. If we already have a pre-built solution, how best do you think it could be taken forward? Would the Government have to be persuaded to adopt the measure and use its time to steer it through? Is that the clear action that we need to focus on to effect that?
