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 1268 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Miles Briggs
Would anyone else like to come in on that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Miles Briggs
I want to ask a couple of questions about the pressures that councils face, a number of which are highlighted in the helpful briefing from COSLA. Glasgow City Council and the City of Edinburgh Council face particular pressures. How do you manage to balance your resources? Specifically, what work are you doing with the third sector, which can play an important role, especially in assisting people who have no recourse to public funds?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Miles Briggs
Andrew Morrison, Alistair Dinnie and Pat Togher all want to come in. I will bring in Andrew Morrison, specifically on my question about the third sector.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Miles Briggs
I want to move on to the budget pressures that will be faced as a result of the coming budget. We know about the concern that has been expressed about cuts to council funding. Martin Booth, who colleagues from Glasgow will know is the executive director of finance at Glasgow City Council, recently represented the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers at the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. He expressed concern about support for English as a second language, which will undoubtedly come under challenge as a result of the budget. We know that around 100 different languages are spoken in the school population in Glasgow.
How is the specific issue of the need for language assistance to access services prioritised by councils? I will bring in Susan Aitken first. If anyone else wants to answer that question, I ask them to put an R in the chat.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Miles Briggs
I am not sure whether anyone else wants to come in on that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Miles Briggs
It follows on from the language question and concerns access to healthcare services. The language barriers around healthcare are often critically important. This question is directed at Pat Togher. What work is under way on that? We know that barriers to access to healthcare already exist for homeless people but are greater for people who do not have English as their first language.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. Any details that you can provide to us of what that looks like would be very useful.
I want to move on to the issue of addressing stigma, which you touched on in your opening statement, and the role of trauma-informed services. I will specifically focus on local government. There are concerns that budgetary pressures will mean that the task force’s recommendations and local authorities’ work in trying to turn around the public health crisis will not necessarily be carried out. I fully accept that there are pressures because of the pandemic, but why do you think that that is the case? Given the cuts that we are seeing to local council budgets, are you concerned that the issues that we need local authorities to address—housing is often one of the key issues—will not necessarily be addressed? How will the task force recommend that those aspects are given the priority that they need?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Miles Briggs
Good morning, Mr Strang. Thank you for joining us. I will ask about a few issues that relate to Community Pharmacy Scotland’s role in the public health crisis. In your opening statement, you highlighted naloxone. Why has some of the work that was meant to be done on access to single records for individuals not been done?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. Perhaps I will take up that detail with the Minister for Drugs Policy in our next evidence session.
All of us at the meeting support the naloxone programme, but it has not gone where we wanted it to. Part of the frustration about the task force is that some of the key recommendations that the Government accepted do not seem to have been implemented. I fully understand that you are new to the role, but can you tell me why those discussions with Community Pharmacy Scotland have not taken place?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Miles Briggs
It would be helpful to get an update on timescales. I was a member of the Health and Sport Committee in session 5, and we understood that the work would be moved forward quite quickly. The opportunity to provide some sort of traffic-light warning system for patients was discussed, but that does not seem to have materialised. I hope that that will become a genuine priority and that progress will be made on that.
I turn to review of available treatments, on which I have corresponded with you for some time. I am thinking about the potential availability of treatment such as neuro-electric therapy. Where is the Government with the work to enable people to feel that they are genuinely able to take decisions about what is best for them and their families, given where they are with their addictions, and to support their decision making and empowerment?
