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 921 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Child-friendly Complaints Handling Principles
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Bill Kidd
That is very helpful. Thank you very much.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Bill Kidd
That is useful. On the back of what you were talking about with Michelle Thomson on the number of women and young girls becoming interested and getting opportunities, do you think that the Scottish Administration needs to concentrate more on that side of it to push it further?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Child-friendly Complaints Handling Principles
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Bill Kidd
I have a wee question on the practicalities of all this. How will public bodies be made aware of the revised principles? Do you liaise with public bodies across the field?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Languages Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Bill Kidd
I will move to Scots. The committee has heard differing views on whether the bill should explicitly recognise the variety of Scots dialects or Scottish languages across the country. In your opinion, should the bill be clearer that it seeks to promote and support Lallans, Doric, Orcadian and Norn et cetera, as opposed to saying, “This is it, and that is the way you’ve got it”?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Languages Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Bill Kidd
It is important that all views should be listened to. The idea is that Scots has Government backing, that it should be listened to more and that the opportunities that are attached to it should be increased in the same way as with Gaelic. That is important. However, because of the different pronunciations and dialectical variations across Scotland, there will be issues to do with how it is taught and how it is listened to. Is that being taken on board right at the beginning?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Languages Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Bill Kidd
On the back of that, some stakeholders and others have told the committee that they can see that Bòrd na Gàidhlig is doing fantastic work, and they are therefore disappointed that the bill does not include the establishment of a Scots board of equal significance. Has the Government heard that evidence, and has it considered whether the bill could or should include a provision on the establishment of a Scots board?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Languages Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Bill Kidd
From listening to what was said by stakeholders and others, I think that they see the idea of a Scots board as something that helps to focus thinking and provide a constant push in the way that Bòrd na Gàidhlig does. However, others have said that it is more important to provide an emphasis on encouragement and support for the bodies that already exist and, therefore, for the people who use the languages and dialects, in order to give them more comfort, rather than providing something that would possibly be an academic body. There are differing opinions.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Instruments subject to Negative Procedure
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Bill Kidd
Under agenda item 2, we are considering two instruments, on which no points have been raised.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Instruments subject to Negative Procedure
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Bill Kidd
The next meeting of the committee will take place on Tuesday 28 May.
Meeting closed at 10:06.Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Instruments subject to Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Bill Kidd
The instrument sets the maximum penalty that can be imposed on the landlord of a tied pub for breaching the Scottish pubs code. In correspondence with the Scottish Government, the committee queried two aspects of the regulations.
First, the committee queried the reference in regulation 4(2) to a business being
“part of a group undertaking”.
The Scottish Government agreed that that reference is not sufficiently clear and advised that it will be corrected.
Does the committee wish to draw the instrument to the attention of the Parliament on reporting ground (h), in that the meaning of that reference could be clearer?
Members indicated agreement.
