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 1119 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
I will put on record a written question that I submitted to the Scottish Government:
“To ask the Scottish Government whether it will consider providing grants to support taxi drivers to upgrade their cars to sustainable, low-emissions vehicles.”
I understand that one of the big issues that taxi drivers in Glasgow currently face is the imminent implementation of a low-emission zone in the city centre. Certainly, the petitioner, Unite—the trade union that represents taxi drivers in the city; I am a member of Unite, just to declare an interest—has indicated that the LEZ could significantly affect the already difficult situation that the taxi trade faces, reducing numbers further or killing the trade in the city altogether.
Anecdotally, I can say that it is very difficult to get a taxi in Glasgow, especially on weekends, when it is busy.
The Scottish Government response to my written question was:
“The Scottish Government currently offers a number of funding schemes, through Transport Scotland, to support businesses (including taxi owners) make the shift to low and zero-emission vehicles. Applications for these funds can be made through the Energy Saving Trust who administer the schemes on our behalf.
Available support includes:
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the Switched-on Taxi Loan scheme which offers an interest free loan up to £120,000 to enable taxi owners and operators to replace their current vehicle with an eligible ultra-low emission vehicle.
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the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) Retrofit Fund for taxi owners operating within LEZs. This provides up to 80% grant funding to replace existing diesel engines to meet the Euro 6 standard for driving within a LEZ. The grant provides up to £10,000 per wheelchair accessible taxi installing re-powering technology, or £5,000 per taxi installing exhaust after-treatment systems.
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the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) Support Fund, which is available to eligible microbusinesses and sole traders (including taxi operators), operating within a 20km radius of Scotland’s LEZs. The fund provides a £2,500 grant towards the safe disposal of non-compliant vehicles as an incentive to take older, more polluting vehicles off the road.”—[Written Answers, 6 January 2022; S6W-05239.]
Those are the schemes that are available. The first one, the switched-on taxi loan scheme, sounds as though it would more than meet the cost of a vehicle replacement, but the other ones do not seem to come close to meeting the capital outlay that a driver might face in trying to replace a vehicle that does not meet the standard, so I think that there is a gap there that needs to be interrogated.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Really? I will need to send you one, then.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Okay—that is fine. I got one with “COP26” written on it, which was quite cool. It probably peels off after a while, so maybe it is not such a good thing.
Who did you meet at COP26? What kind of people did you go and see?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Who is the landowner in that instance? Who was being accused?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Thank you for your informative contributions. When I looked at the photographic evidence that you submitted, I was struck by example 2 and the brutal-looking clearance of ancient woodland and felling of trees in Argyll.
You say that, having investigated the felling work that was carried out, Scottish Forestry is pursuing a breach of the Forestry and Land Management Act (Scotland) 2018. What penalties are there in the act for that sort of breach? Penalties are often so utterly weak that infringements can be priced in. Some people take the risk of a parking fine: a £30 hit will not massively change their behaviour. What is the current provision for enforcement? When the rules are enforced, what are the penalties? I would like to know more about that.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
What is Argyll and Bute Council’s position? Has the council expressed a view on TPOs and enforcement?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Would a fixed-penalty scheme to immediately impose a financial penalty on such an infringement help to drive behaviours better? If there was a beefier or more robust sanction on bad practice, it would probably drive behaviours. As you said, prosecutions are difficult to achieve, so you might end up in a situation where prosecution is hardly a viable sanction and you are trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
What was your favourite thing about COP26?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
Oh, right—I did not see the bouncy castle. I am gutted that I missed that. I saw the big giant planet that span round. That was really cool. I thought that that was really interesting.
Another thing that was really cool was that I got a reusable water bottle when I visited COP26. I think that everybody who visited Glasgow for the conference got one, so when you submitted your petition, I thought, “Why don’t we give our own children the same thing? Why are we giving all these VIPs metal reusable water bottles?” Do you think that it was a bit of a double standard? Is it important that we set an example and that, if we did it at COP, we should do it for kids as well?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Paul Sweeney
That is fantastic. Did they agree that bringing reusable water bottles into schools was a good idea?
