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 914 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Judicial Factors (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 April 2024
Bill Kidd
That is quite clear, but the wording in the bill does not make it as clear.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Judicial Factors (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 April 2024
Bill Kidd
Thank you.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Judicial Factors (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 April 2024
Bill Kidd
The Government will look at what you have said when it is formulating its approach but do you think that it might approach you to get further clarification on what you are looking for? There seems to be at least a bit of a differentiation there, shall we say.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Judicial Factors (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 April 2024
Bill Kidd
Right. That is fair enough. It is just that, because there is such an element of divergence there, I was not 100 per cent sure. Maybe it is not as wide as has been presented, but there will be discussion about it.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Judicial Factors (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 April 2024
Bill Kidd
That is useful. Thank you very much for that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Judicial Factors (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 April 2024
Bill Kidd
I thank the witnesses for their responses, which have been very helpful.
Section 5 of the bill would abolish the requirement to find caution, save in exceptional circumstances. One policy justification for that is that, when a professional is appointed as a judicial factor, they will have professional indemnity insurance. However, in response to your discussion paper in 2010, the Accountant of Court said that she thought that the scope of accountants’ professional indemnity insurance might not be as broad as is generally thought, and that it might not cover embezzlement by accountants. If you remember that—I know that that is going back a bit—did the commission resolve that concern when it was raised when developing its policy on section 5?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Bill Kidd
I thank the cabinet secretary for her replies, which will be very useful to us.
Before I ask my question, I am going to have a wee ramble about the physical environment of education, if that is all right. You have already mentioned some elements of that, cabinet secretary, but I would point out that, three weeks ago, the committee explored how physical environments can contribute to inclusive education. On that note, I want to give you three wee quotes from some of our witnesses, if you do not mind. Suzi Martin of the National Autistic Society Scotland said:
“The trend towards superschools is potentially unhelpful and quite harmful, depending on what those superschools look like.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 28 February 2024; c 19.]
In its submission, the Govan Law Centre said:
“it perplexes us as to why schools are becoming bigger, meaning more sensory and social stimuli to navigate”,
while Dr Lynne Binnie of ADES told us:
“The design of buildings is often determined at local authority level through different approaches, perhaps involving professionals such as architects, who might not always understand or know about the complex needs of the children we see in the current system and project in the future of our buildings.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 13 March 2024; c 54-5.]
Those are some of the views that we have heard, and they tend to suggest that, in the buildings that are replacing new-build schools—and even in those in the existing estate—the learning environment can be damaging for pupils with additional support needs. How is the Scottish Government supporting local authorities to ensure that those schools are suitable for all children?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Bill Kidd
As you say, the Scottish Government supports local authorities by providing them with funding to design, develop and build schools, but decisions are made by the local authorities. Does that mean that there is no overarching approach to changing school design when that might not be beneficial to all children?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Bill Kidd
In joint evidence that was given to us by Enquire and My Rights, My Say, they said that they continue
“to hear about many of the long-term negative impacts”
of the pandemic. Has there been enough focus on and investment in supporting children, particularly those with anxiety, to re-engage with learning following the pandemic and the isolation that took place due to that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Bill Kidd
That is the best direction. Thank you.
