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 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
I am not particularly bothered about keeping the petition open; it was merely to mention another angle that might be worth considering. We might write to Historic Environment Scotland to ask it to consider the statutory listing of war memorials, to give them a degree of protection in planning law.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Yes, that is fine.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
That was an interesting introduction, minister.
In the previous evidence session, it was identified that the Woodland Trust has already done an exercise to investigate the extent of ancient woodland in Scotland and has identified that it amounts to about 5 hectares in total. Will the Government give a commitment to undertake to protect all of that under an SSSI designation as quickly as possible?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
I have been quite taken aback by the testimony today, as I think that we all have. It is obviously disappointing to hear the Government’s position on this. On the suggestion that the Scottish Government might consider addressing future recommendations made by the inquiry to improve legislation, policy and practice, do you think that will be sufficient to address any of the concerns that have been raised in your petition, or do you feel that that would not come close to dealing with the issue? Is there at least some element of what the Government is saying that might be helpful, or do you think that it is not adequate at all?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Thank you very much.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Okay. I am happy to rest on that.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
An interesting theme arose in discussion with the petitioners at the previous meeting when we discussed potential comparators for the kind of protection that they would like for ancient woodland. The listed buildings programme and scheduled ancient monuments arose as a basis for considering how a new scheme of protection could be introduced instead of protection simply being from an SSSI, which might require a significant burden of evidence about particular horticulturally, scientifically or biologically significant characteristics. In effect, the forestry could simply merit protection on the basis that its amenity is important to the community or that it is known as an ancient woodland of native species rather than any other requirements.
Is there an opportunity to consider something akin to the scheduled ancient monuments programme or listed buildings programme under which communities could nominate for consideration areas of woodland that they want to be protected? When the listing system and protections for built heritage were introduced in the 1960s, it required a national survey, which was done by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, to identify the national list of protected sites. Perhaps a similar survey could be undertaken for woodlands, given the national scale the pressure that is faced. Perhaps that could be an interesting benchmark to consider.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
I am sympathetic to the petitioner’s request, as I think that the additional member system is rubbish—but there we go.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
I am curious as to whether it is in the gift of the Government to change the electoral system. Surely that is a parliamentary decision. Is it not for the Parliamentary Bureau to consider a review of the Parliament’s electoral system rather than the Government?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
There is a similar issue with the bluebell wood example. The landowner is at liberty to do what he or she likes with the asset and does not need planning permission to make any changes. Is something more akin to planning consent needed for forestry and woodlands? Should they be designated similarly to how listed buildings are designated? Is that what you look to achieve?
