I get no search results?
You must include at least one word in your keyword search.
Try using as few words as possible to ensure you find an exact match for what you are looking for.
If you don’t get the results you expect, try clearing your search and running it again; this can sometimes happen if several people are running searches simultaneously.
There are strange symbols in my search results
Hansard (the people who write the transcripts in Parliament) sometimes use special quotation marks (” “) or em-dashes (—), which can occasionally cause issues with how the database saves the text. We periodically tidy these up, but new ones can creep in if a transcript is re-added to the database. By following the link to the original transcript, you can view the original text on the Parliament website, where these symbols will appear correctly.
I’ve searched for someone who I know said something and I get no results
This website needs to parse the HTML transcripts from Parliament’s website to create its database of the transcripts. Hansard (the people who write the transcripts) aren’t always consistent in how they label their transcripts, so occasionally, our code can’t make sense of who Hansard labelled as speaking. This only occurs when you are searching for something said by the Chair of a Committee. When new transcripts get added, occasionally when the Chair is speaking, they are added as “Chair” to the database because that is what Hansard calls them. Our intelligent code works round this, but occasionally it can’t tell who the Chair is from the transcript. We actively monitor new transcripts added, but it can take a few days before any errors get corrected.