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 436 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 January 2025
Carol Mochan
Cabinet secretary, I want to ask about ministerial powers. You may or may not be able to put anything on the record at this point, but I will give you an opportunity to do so. The bill contains 10 delegated powers provisions: nine regulation-making powers and one power to issue guidance. At this stage, does the Scottish Government have any comment about the scope of the regulation-making powers in the bill?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 January 2025
Carol Mochan
That is helpful. Thank you, convener.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Carol Mochan
You have already touched on the issue of assisted suicide, but do you have any comment on Office for National Statistics research that found that a diagnosis or first treatment for certain conditions was associated with an elevated rate of death from suicide? I know that you have touched on that, and that the evidence varies, but I am giving you another opportunity to talk about the issue. Are there any safeguards in the bill when it comes to giving people the ability to know that assisted death might be available to them? How would you respond to that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Carol Mochan
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Carol Mochan
The first theme is the definition of terminal illness. A range of views have been expressed about the eligibility criteria used in the bill around the definition. Will you give us your views on that? In particular, do you think that conditions such as motor neurone disease, Alzheimer’s and cerebral palsy should or would be covered by that definition?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Carol Mochan
Marianne, do you have a view?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Carol Mochan
Given what you have said throughout today’s evidence session, I absolutely understand.
If the bill became law, would your organisation find it helpful if assisted dying was not discussed at all, or should people have the right to have that option placed in front of them when they discussed their options?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Carol Mochan
Okay, that is helpful.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Carol Mochan
In theory, though, people should be aware of the option.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Carol Mochan
My question relates to the situation if the bill became law, so I will try to make it brief. Lyn Pornaro talked about assisted dying as a treatment option. I suppose that my question can be quite straightforward.
Under the Montgomery ruling, people should, rightly, have all the options put to them. In this case, as disabled people’s organisations, would it help with the issue of pressure, in the way that you have described it, if that was not the case—that is, if assisted dying was not seen as a reasonable treatment option, and so was not discussed at that stage? Alternatively, do you feel, as you expressed before, that that might mean that people did not have all the options placed in front of them? If the bill was enacted and became law, how would you feel about that?
11:45