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 498 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Devolution Post-EU
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Sarah Boyack
That is helpful. I will leave that with you and your committee to think about. When you compare our report with the Senedd committee’s report, you can see that there are a lot of cross-overs. There is quite a range of people on our committee.
I will follow up on that question with Huw Irranca-Davies. I was very interested in your committee’s report, because of the cross-overs with what our committee thought. I want to hear your comments on solutions for interparliamentary and intergovernmental relations. I will start with interparliamentary relations, because you talked about your committee engaging directly with counterpart committees. What are the key lessons for developing solutions in respect of devolution across the UK?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Devolution Post-EU
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Sarah Boyack
That is very interesting and helpful for our report. What about the intergovernmental solutions that you have suggested in your report? In particular, you mention two potential solutions—a formal dispute resolution procedure and an independent secretariat—to strengthen intergovernmental work. Were those proposals agreed on a cross-party basis in your committee?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Sarah Boyack
Where is the disconnect, then? We received really strong representations from witnesses at last week’s committee meeting, which was backed up by the huge number of people who wrote in and by the campaigns that are being run. People are very worried about the loss of access to live performances.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Sarah Boyack
From listening to the evidence and reading the submissions, it feels as though the decision cuts across four of the five key principles of the BBC charter. It seems to go in the opposite direction to the idea of the BBC working across the United Kingdom, which is meant to be one of the core principles of its operation. In addition, it does not deliver on the two high-level ambitions in the annual plan.
Do you think that the decision was not thought through? If there is no production on the ground, in communities in Scotland, it will not matter which radio programme the music is on: something will be lost. Has the BBC not thought through the detail? Is there any acknowledgement that the decision does not deliver what the BBC is meant to deliver as a public broadcasting company?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Sarah Boyack
I take it that everybody agrees with that.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Sarah Boyack
That is helpful—thank you.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Sarah Boyack
That is helpful.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Sarah Boyack
The BBC is also very big on digital and BBC Sounds. I am totally up for that, but there is still a need for productions that can be put on BBC Sounds. It feels as though the decision was not thought through.
You have talked about the impact on the core areas of education and accessibility. If the changes happen, it seems that there will be no pipeline through to live performance in pipe, classical and jazz, which are three key areas of Scottish musical culture. That is a critical disconnect. We will speak to the BBC next week. It would be useful to be able to reinforce the point that there will be a major impact on those three areas if that pipeline does not exist. Has that been acknowledged?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Sarah Boyack
It is very good that you will give us that update on the recommendations—we do not have time to let you run through them in their entirety.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Sarah Boyack
I would be very interested in the committee getting an update on the 16 recommendations from the review of the supersponsor scheme, which I think was put out in November last year, and an update on the £50 million scheme that was launched in September.
You mentioned repurposing and accessing homes. There are 43,000 empty homes in Scotland—there are more than 9,000 in Edinburgh. I think that there is huge interest in a cost-effective way of getting access to homes. I am thinking in particular about those who have been hosts, given that it has been almost one year since we began to recognise the devastation. Many houses and communities have been bombed and destroyed, so this is not now about the short term, as you have correctly acknowledged; it is about giving people that medium-term support.
Could we have an update on the £50 million scheme and the extent to which we can use it to repurpose existing empty homes, which would be cost effective? Could you also say something about continuing support for hosts? Many are over their six months. Are you bringing new hosts into play? Can you talk about what is happening now?
