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 732 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
That does say something to the scale of it.
I want to ask about the change in law in 1735 after the so-called “glorious revolution”. Will you talk a bit more about the impact of that on witchcraft convictions and sentences and give your reflections on why it took more than 200 years for the Witchcraft Act 1735 to be repealed?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
I had a bit of trouble with my microphone there. I concur with my colleagues.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
Notwithstanding the fact that the Scottish Government has no intention to restructure the health boards, I think that at the crux of the petition is healthcare for individuals in Caithness. I wonder whether colleagues would agree to writing to NHS Highland for an update on the community midwifery unit, including a timescale for its completion.
I also wonder whether we should consider this petition alongside a couple of others mentioned in our papers—PE1845, on an agency to advocate for the healthcare needs of rural Scotland, and PE1890, on finding solutions to recruitment and training challenges for rural healthcare in Scotland—and invite the petitioner to give evidence.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
Good morning, Zoe and Claire. Thanks for being with us.
What would lead to a woman being accused of witchcraft? There are some misapprehensions about the type of women who were accused of it. Could you speak about that a little?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
Zoe, do you have anything to add on those questions?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
I think that they have been covered. I wanted to explore a bit more the discriminatory nature of the issue, but the petitioners have told us in their evidence that it relates predominantly to women and people with other vulnerabilities, so we have covered that aspect. Are colleagues going to ask about Natalie Don’s proposed bill?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
I do. Will I just keep coming back in, convener?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
Okay. I will not wait for an invite.
Who would normally conduct the trials, and what sort of evidence would be used to secure a conviction? Claire, you gave an example of someone falling ill or any sort of negative experience befalling a community. Are there any other specific examples that you could give about the evidence that the state would use and who would conduct the trial?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
In your opening statement, you mentioned 2,500 people being executed and 4,000 being tortured. How confident are you that the figures set out in the survey of Scottish witchcraft present an accurate picture of the number of women affected during the period that it covers?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Ruth Maguire
I appreciate the Scottish Government’s response regarding the details of legal aid and the consultation that has taken place. I also appreciate the point about means testing and affordability in a budget context. Nonetheless, the matter is really important. It comes up in my constituency casework—as, I am sure, it does for other members of the committee.
The petitioner talks about the mental health impact on parents. We need to remember that the issue is not simply access to justice but the wellbeing of children. We need to ensure that what we have in place is as helpful as possible to families that are going through break-ups and looking after children.
I suggest that, in the first instance, we write to some stakeholders to seek their views on the issues that are raised, perhaps including One Parent Families Scotland, Relationships Scotland, the Scottish Civil Justice Council and the Scottish Legal Aid Board.
