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 708 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Non-Domestic Rates (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Graeme Dey
What about the absence of a BRIA?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Non-Domestic Rates (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Graeme Dey
Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Non-Domestic Rates (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Graeme Dey
Good morning. When the committee considered the secondary legislation relating to the bill, a number of stakeholders raised concerns about what they considered to be a lack of consultation prior to the introduction of that secondary legislation. That was reflected in the committee’s report; in fact, the committee encouraged the Government to take the opportunity afforded by the bill to undertake further consultation with stakeholders on the proposed legislation. However, some stakeholders have told us that no specific consultation has been undertaken on the bill, and others have highlighted the lack of an accompanying business and regulatory impact assessment. How do you respond to those criticisms?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Non-Domestic Rates (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Graeme Dey
Do you feel that the matters that are covered in the bill were covered in the extensive dialogue that you, Kate Forbes and Ivan McKee had with businesses?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Graeme Dey
Can I pick up on that point? It is right that the local authority would engage with the local public health authority on those issues. A bit of clarity is perhaps needed around roles and responsibilities, because the committee was specifically told that, when efforts were being made to close schools before Christmas 2020 to protect staff and pupils—and rightly so—local authorities were telling the EIS that they could not close schools early before Christmas because of the way that the powers are set out. It sounds to me that there is a bit of confusion there that needs to be clarified.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Graeme Dey
I want to move the discussion on to the lessons that have been learned about how we can do this better in light of the experience of the past two years. Last week, the committee took evidence on the powers of local authorities to close schools on public health grounds. It was told that they do not have such powers.
Has the Government considered, or would it consider, including in the bill a local decision-making power of that nature? Have you thought about amending, replacing or repealing the Schools General (Scotland) Regulations 1975 to clarify duties around the closure or keeping open of schools? You talked about engagement with stakeholders. Can you touch on the extent to which you have engaged with local authorities on the issue? That seems a bit anomalous if what we were told last week is correct, which is that the local authorities cannot close schools on public health grounds. They can close them if they cannot physically staff a school, but they do not have that power during an emergency. Would you be prepared to look at that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Graeme Dey
I have nothing to declare.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Graeme Dey
Compared with the very serious matters that we have been discussing, the aspect of the bill that I want to ask about might seem quite trivial, but I would like some clarification on it. Throughout the meeting, the cabinet secretary has said that ministers would be dependent on public health advice, which would drive the actions that were taken. Section 6 of the bill states that ministers would need to
“have regard to ... advice from the Chief Medical Officer ... or from another person designated for the purposes of this section by the Scottish Ministers, about protecting public health.”
Is that simply a cover-all provision in case the CMO is not available—the advice might be from the deputy CMO—or the job title changes? What is the reason for that provision? At face value, it seems a bit odd.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Graeme Dey
Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Graeme Dey
Thank you for reminding me of a previous life. We should reflect on those days. They were dark and difficult days, but the Parliament was at its best, as Willie Rennie will remember.
However, as we moved through the pandemic, Parliament became frustrated about its level of oversight. By way of response, we established the COVID-19 Committee. Is it not the case that the point about the approach that you are taking here is that it must be a package? The protections are being built in right at the outset, and Parliament knows exactly what its role will be. It will have every opportunity to have the input and scrutiny that were perhaps lacking during the early stages of the pandemic. Is it not the case that we are looking at a package and that, regardless of the concerns that are expressed by individuals, over the piece, the bill provides for the kind of input that Parliament began to cry out for at the height of the pandemic?
