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 2643 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
Does that ethos of collaboration extend to Parliaments and civic society? Is that also codified in the concordats? Is there an expectation that citizens will be involved in discussions around trade agreements or any other policies that are pursued by regions or states?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
Can I bring in Dr Zuleeg, please?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
Thank you—that was very useful. Does that focus carry through to the concordats that are established between those sub-state regions and countries and the EU? What are the most successful features of those concordats? Perhaps we could go back to Mr Salamone.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
Are there any examples of third countries or sub-states that have been particularly successful in aligning their strategic priorities with the institutional cycle?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
Thank you for sharing that news with us. Obviously, it is in its very early days. As institutions, civil society organisations or European citizens that scrutinise the process, how can we engage with it practically? Will there be full access to papers that are being brought up to the PPA for scrutiny? Will there be full disclosure and full transparency, and what might that look like? What mechanisms are you used to implementing in your foreign affairs committee? What kind of culture of openness and transparency might we expect for the PPA? What might that look like when it comes to sharing the information that is presented to the elected representatives on both sides but that perhaps is not available to citizens or those who scrutinise the process from afar, as we in Holyrood do?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
Thank you.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
Good morning. Where are we at the moment in the EU institutional cycle? How are third countries, but also countries that are sub-states that are part of third countries, engaging with that institutional cycle process at the moment? What are the strategic areas? How are such countries engaging with those? I would like to start with Mr Salamone.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
Good morning, Mr McAllister. It is nice that you are in front of the committee.
I want to ask you about transparency, particularly in relation to the parliamentary partnership assembly. What expectations do MEPs have about how open and transparent the workings of that assembly will be? I am thinking in particular about the long-established rights that we have as European citizens to be part of open policy making and in relation to the business of policy making and scrutiny being open and democratic. What demands will MEPs make on how accessible the workings of that assembly will be? What will be the implications for European citizens?
Meeting of the Parliament
Culture
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
I thank the minister for her statement and, in particular, the increased funding for the culture collective and the Scottish Crannog Centre. We have all had incredible experiences at the centre. It is an absolute time machine and it would be great to see the crannog recreated.
The statement underlines the importance of the creative sector to wellbeing, regeneration, place making and mental health. The sector consists of busy, creative organisations, but they often spend a lot of time applying for annual funding year after year. A lot of creative time is wasted through that funding process, so what hope can the minister give us that we will move to a multiyear funding process that ensures that creative organisations have the certainty to invest in their communities and deliver all the amazing wellbeing benefits that we are used to them delivering?
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Mark Ruskell
As the Longannet chimney was demolished this morning, I am sure that the First Minister felt that it was an historic moment in our journey towards net zero. It was, however, also a moment to reflect on our gratitude to the workers who kept our lights on for so many decades. Are there lessons for a wider just transition that we can learn from the way in which Longannet was shut back in 2016?
