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 3204 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
On that point, I note that the Scottish Government has said that it has made repeated representations. It might be useful to ask for a schedule of those representations so that we can see when all those repeated representations have been made.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
That is very helpful.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
I am happy to include that in any representation that we make.
We have had quite a collection of suggestions. Are colleagues content that we keep the petition open, and that the clerks work out what colleagues recommended in that detailed list of submissions?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
We thank the petitioner very much. I hope that she been pleased to see the interest that the committee has in her petition. We will take forward the aims of the petition, and we will see what progress we are able to make with it.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Are colleagues content?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
We thank the petitioner for the petition. In light of the evidence that we have received, I believe that we can safely close it. We thank the petitioner for raising the issue with us.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
In view of the way in which legislation has moved in the interim and that being the view of the Government, I do not think that there is much more that we can expect to progress on the petition. Are colleagues content?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
It is that bold determination by the Scottish Government not to engage in a discussion on the principal ask of the petition, whatever the merits of many of the arguments that have been presented to us, that makes it difficult for us to pursue it. Colleagues, are there any alternative suggestions or are we, with some reluctance, inclined to support Mr Torrance’s proposal? I believe that we are.
I commend the petitioner for bringing the petition to us. I thank him and the others who have made detailed submissions to us. However, given that the Scottish Government has firmly rejected the principal ask of the petition, unfortunately, there is nothing more that the committee can do to advance its aims. We are not the Government and we cannot instruct it to engage. Are colleagues content?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Are we content, given that our colleagues are pursuing these matters elsewhere? I do not think that there is anything that we can usefully forward to the Criminal Justice Committee, which appears to be directly addressing the issue. Are we content to support Mr Torrance’s proposal?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Jackson Carlaw
Agenda item 3 is the consideration of new petitions. As there may be people in the public gallery or people at home who are joining us who have a new petition, I point out that, ahead of this consideration, we invite the Scottish Government to give us a preliminary view, and we invite the Parliament’s independent research body, the Scottish Parliament information centre—SPICe—to prepare a briefing for us on the issues raised by the petition. We do that because, historically, when we did not do it, that was the first thing that we did when we met to consider a petition, and it simply delayed moving forward with consideration in detail. We therefore have those briefings ahead of our consideration this morning.
The first new petition is PE2094, on reviewing the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 and expanding the remit of the First-tier Tribunal to include commercial properties. The petition, which has been lodged by Alban Bartley-Jones, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to review the legislation on property factors and to take steps to ensure that commercial properties are also protected, and to expand the remit of the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland housing and property chamber to allow it to consider cases affecting wholly commercial properties.
The petition has been prompted by the petitioner’s experience of a commercial property factor continuing to bill building tenants despite not having a contract with any of them. The SPICe briefing highlights that the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 has limited relevance for the commercial property sector, as the main aim behind the legislation was to
“create a statutory framework which would protect Scottish homeowners who contract with property factors.”
As the 2011 act does not apply in the case of wholly commercial properties, disputes between businesses and commercial property factors are dealt with in the normal court system rather than the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland housing and property chamber.
In response to the petition, the Minister for Housing stated that the 2011 act was not intended to apply to property factors that are solely concerned with providing a service to commercial property owners and that the Scottish Government has no plans to amend the act to cover relationships between commercial property owners and factors where there is no residential element involved.
This is the first consideration of the petition, and that is quite a trenchant response from the Scottish Government. Nonetheless, are there any options open to us that colleagues would like to propose?
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