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 867 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
It is correct, according to the best estimates and the best information that we have. The assumptions in the financial memorandum are spelt out and we are providing the committee with the best information that we have available.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
We have not started the co-design process. Councils may decide that that is an outcome that they would like to go for. Through the co-design process, councils would need to decide that that is where they want to get to. We would then have to come up with a plan for how councils get to that point. I cannot anticipate what might come out of the co-design process.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
They are not, because, as my colleague Alex Quayle pointed out, the first step is to design the co-design process.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
The financial memorandum outlines the cost and potential benefits for each provision. On the overall economic benefits, I can, of course, enumerate to the member the urgency of reaching net zero and the overall intention of reducing waste in our society. Those inefficiencies where resources—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
The bill’s provisions enable us to start the journey of looking at all the pieces that we need to put into place. Taking all those pieces through primary legislation would not be proportionate to what is being brought in, even in respect of parliamentary time.
We already have very good models for a lot of what is happening here. We have a voluntary code of practice, so bringing into legislation a more mandatory code of practice is a sort of logical next step. We are all familiar with the plastic bag charge and we could be bringing in a cup charge. The level of scrutiny needs to be appropriate to the changes that are being brought in, which is why we are proposing to bring in the detailed measures through secondary legislation. Scrutiny of secondary legislation can, to some degree, be as in-depth as committees and members wish it to be. We have had good recent examples of negative statutory instruments that underwent detailed scrutiny in committee and so on.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
Those are economic benefits. When a business is wasting materials, that is, of course, a cost to that business. It is also a cost to society when we, as a society, are using the planet’s resources to produce goods that do not benefit anybody. There is a larger case to be made: a circular economy, which is the point of this, is one that does not have waste and which is efficient, so that all our resources are put to best use. Those provisions fit in a larger scope of work, with the route map work that the UK Government is doing. They are all designed to improve the economic case and reduce inefficiency in the system.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
No. It is completely independent of the Scottish Government.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
We certainly intend to allocate the remainder of the fund as efficiently and effectively as possible, but we would need to discuss what funding might follow on from that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
No, I am content with the financial memorandum that has been presented. I believe that the context of the question from Michelle Thomson was that, if there were more detail down the line as we develop the policy, I would be happy to come back to the committee. Our information is the best that we have at this time. I am at the committee’s disposal, should it wish me to come back if the situation changes and an update is required, but this is the best information that is available and appropriate to the bill.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Lorna Slater
The difference is that this is a strategic bill, where we are setting out our strategic intentions to reduce waste, to improve opportunities in recycling, and to be able to create jobs in that circular economy. That is absolutely our strategic intention, and the bill is strategic. The specific pieces of policy implementation will be part of the secondary legislation and, indeed, work on our route map and so forth as we go forward. The details of specific provisions—for example, the reporting of waste from a specific industry, such as the cosmetics industry—will be developed with that industry. That is exactly the point. At this point, this is the strategic level and, therefore, we are putting in strategic level implications.
