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 2616 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
National Outcomes
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Mark Ruskell
Thanks.
I want to pick up on a couple of points in the report. There is a recommendation that the UK Government should work with the Scottish Government to create, in effect, a Scottish brand. How easy would that be to do? There is clearly an intersection of interests around the economy, with joint aspirations, but to what extent can we go beyond that? How would you see that evolving?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
National Outcomes
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Mark Ruskell
Regarding the international offices and the joint working between missions and embassies, we find that there are different programmes of work between, say, the Copenhagen office and the Irish office, and Washington will be different again. Does there need to be a consistency of approach? You have highlighted that there is perhaps a difference in energy or focus from one office to the next. Does that play out in terms of our interests in those particular countries and regions? Is there something more about the joint working that needs to be codified or brought into a more consistent approach?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
National Outcomes
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Mark Ruskell
My last question is about how the relationship plays out in Ireland. I did not see on the list of concerns from the secretary of state that there had been inappropriate bilaterals or meetings in Ireland. When the committee went to Ireland recently, my sense was that there was a very different set of expectations there, that conversations were far more fluid between politicians in the north and south and across the UK, and that there was less concern about, or stricture put on, the nature of those conversations and who has to be in the room. Is that your conclusion?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
National Outcomes
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Mark Ruskell
The “Promoting Scotland Internationally” report is really interesting, and I want to pick up on a couple of points.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
National Outcomes
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Mark Ruskell
The focus of the report is on promoting Scotland internationally, so it is all about culture, economic development and the diaspora. Is there a question for your committee, Mr Wishart, about how Scotland projects itself internationally, particularly from a global justice perspective?
Giving birth to the industrial revolution is in our history, and we were part of a colonial project of empire. There are questions about how we relate to the world now. I am thinking about the Scotland-Malawi link as a way to address global justice in a modern age. Beyond the work of embassies, economic development and promotion, which are hugely important, is there anything that needs to be considered in how we project ourselves as an international player? That brings in soft power, the United Nations climate change conference of the parties and things that you have already mentioned.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
National Outcomes
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Mark Ruskell
It is clear that there can be an intersection. For example, there are trade and business elements at COP, but there are also global justice and international negotiations elements. Some of those are reserved matters, but they impinge on devolved responsibilities.
I noticed that the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland was at the Arctic Circle Assembly meeting in Reykjavik. Again, that assembly is about trade and business, but it is also about the big challenge of the climate. It seems that there is something there.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
National Outcomes
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Mark Ruskell
Yes.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
National Outcomes
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Mark Ruskell
I think that there was some relationship between Wales and Lesotho at that time as well.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 31 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
This February, the band Enter Shikari will perform in Edinburgh, not only to celebrate their new LP but to prove a point. In the price of their tickets is a £1 donation to the Music Venue Trust, which will go to grass-roots venues in each of the cities in which the band is playing. The band has shown us that ticket levies do not need to come at a cost to fans. Does the cabinet secretary agree that now is the time for the Scottish Government to accelerate progress towards establishing a stadium tax in Scotland to reverse the decline over the past year in the number of music venues in Scotland?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 30 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
I have a number of questions about the most exciting issue: the joint budget review. I apologise that I was not here for the first couple of minutes of the meeting. However, I am aware that Philip Raines commented on the accuracy of the detail in annex J. It would be very good if the committee could get further updates on that.
I want to ask about the first two strands of work: the overall climate narrative, which was introduced last year, and the classification or taxonomy, which was, I think, introduced this year and is about whether spend is helping or hindering our attempts to tackle climate change. How are you reviewing those two bits of work? Will there be further improvements and further detailed evaluation? Obviously, some accuracy issues have been highlighted. What will you do next year? The information that has been provided is valuable, but it always leaves us wanting more detail and a sense of whether spend is making it harder or easier to tackle the climate emergency.
