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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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
All right. I am happy to keep the petition open for us to take it into account in our consideration.
Are we content to write to key stakeholders to seek their views on the action called for in the petition in order to generate a bit of further information? Are you content for the clerks to give some consideration to who those stakeholders might be and who we might want to hear from? On that recommendation, we will write to a broader body of people, rather than us trying to second-guess who all the organisations are at the moment. Are we content to do that?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Yes. That is helpful, Mr Ewing. Let us face it: on numerous occasions during consideration of petitions in the past, the committee has received submissions in which it was suggested that there was already a route through which the aims of a petition could be realised, only for us to find, on investigation, that there were obstacles in place or that, in fact, the route was rarely exercised or understood. Given that that has been suggested to us as a remedy, it would be helpful to understand the extent to which it is one. I am happy to agree to that. Are we agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
PE1988, lodged by Sue Wallis, calls on the Scottish Government to review the process for allowing raw sewage discharge from homes into Scottish coastal waters; provide additional funding to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency for enforcement; and introduce legislation to ban households from discharging raw sewage.
The SPICe briefing states that financial responsibility for the provision of private sewage treatment rests with the individual home owner or community. The Scottish Government response states that there are no plans to provide additional funds to Scottish Water to provide connections to households with private sewerage arrangements during the current investment period but households have the option to connect to the public network at their own expense and Scottish Water will make a reasonable contribution towards the costs of that project, should a new main be required. The submission states that the current register of septic tanks held by SEPA is incomplete and the number of unauthorised discharges is likely to be high. The Scottish Government notes that SEPA is reviewing its regulation of private sewerage systems.
The petitioner highlights the difference in approach to unauthorised disposals compared with that to dog fouling, where fines are issued to those who do not clear up after their dogs. She shares her experience of reporting issues to SEPA in 2019 and expresses concern that nothing has changed in almost four years. The petitioner questions the method of registering private water discharge with SEPA at the point of house sale: in her experience, several of the properties have been sold, but no change has happened as a result.
Do members have comments or suggestions for action?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Are there any other comments? I have to say that, because the dog fouling issue was before the public eye, it led to a change in practice. I cannot help but feel that, if every member of the public was similarly subjected to the voiding of raw sewage into water, there would be much more public concern and engagement on the issue. The parallel that has been drawn is certainly valid. It is quite a visual parallel, and it leads me to believe that we should pursue the issue quite a bit further to see where we get with it.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
The fact that the petitioner is satisfied with the progress and the response received gives weight to that recommendation. Are we agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
We thank the petitioner for raising the issue with us. As with all petitions that are closed, if, in due course, the petitioner feels that the commitments or evidence that we have received do not lead to a satisfactory outcome, they are entitled to bring the issue back by way of a fresh petition after 12 months.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
PE1939, lodged by Suzanne Thornton, calls on the Scottish Government to demonstrate a commitment to health equality for young males born between 1 September 1997 and 1 September 2006 by allowing them to access the human papillomavirus vaccine via the national health service.
We previously considered the petition on 26 October 2022. At that point, we agreed to write to various organisations to gather further information on the issues raised. Members will be aware from our papers that we have received responses from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, Young Scot and the Teenage Cancer Trust. Importantly, in its response, the JCVI set out the reasons why a time-limited catch-up programme for boys was not pursued when the HPV vaccination was extended in 2018. The reasons provided included the different epidemiological situation now compared with when the programme for girls was launched; the good levels of herd immunity as a result of the girls’ programme; and the priority of extending the routine adolescent programme to boys while maintaining high uptake among girls. The JCVI also states that it has no plans to review the need for and value of a catch-up of the HPV immunisation programme for males aged 25 and under, as it believes that that would not be cost-effective.
I also draw members’ attention to the response from the Teenage Cancer Trust, which notes a disparity between the uptake rates of vaccination between males and females of 7.9 per cent and calls for the Scottish Government to include plans for monitoring uptake to be included in the 10-year cancer strategy.
Do members have any comments or suggestions?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
No, that is a fair point. Mr Stewart, are you happy for us to leave the petition open while we pursue that point?
I note also the Teenage Cancer Trust recommendation in relation to the 10-year cancer strategy and the disparity that the trust had identified. That is not so much something for a response, but we should certainly write to the Scottish Government to draw its attention to the Teenage Cancer Trust’s representation.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Yes.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Given your experience—I now have some direct experience, as well—in what way did you find that the inability to access this particular treatment resulted in a different pathway through and out of the pandemic to that of other people? Clearly, bigger concerns still rested with people who are immunosuppressed, even as they saw everybody else acting more normally.
