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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 972 contributions
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
Considering the Scottish Government’s statement in its submission that it will do more research in the area, I wonder whether we should close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders. In doing so, however, we could consider how the petitioner could feed into the research that the Scottish Government is going to do.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
What team do you support?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
The petition is very important, but can I ask that the clerks check the work programme of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee? If it is going to hold an inquiry on the issue, I would like to pass the petition on to it. The petitioner could also give evidence to that inquiry.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
Good morning, Callum. In the 11 years that I have been on this committee, I cannot recall a petitioner twice your age, never mind one as young as you. Well done, and welcome to the committee.
Before I ask questions about the petition, what is your favourite sport?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
I will not say which Scottish team I support, because it is in the headlines quite a lot just now, but I am a Leeds United fan.
When did you first notice in school that there were lots of children using plastic bottles?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
So nearly everybody in your class was using plastic bottles.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
Why do you think that they should not use plastic bottles? I can see that you have lots of examples in front of you.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
My next question is on NPF4. You said that improvements could be made to it to protect woodlands. What improvements could be made?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
The Woodland Trust has campaigned for years for the protection of ancient woodlands. Has any progress been made on the commitments that were made by the Scottish Government? Will they offer greater protection?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
David Torrance
Will commitments by the Scottish Government offer greater protection to ancient woodlands?