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.
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Displaying 2616 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
United Kingdom Internal Market
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
Specifically on the deposit return scheme, if that scheme was amended, would it come within the scope of your remit?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
I want to return to the topic of policy coherence, on which I have a question for Lewis Ryder-Jones. You diplomatically talked about a company in Fife. I think that you were talking about Raytheon UK and the account management that Scottish Enterprise was supplying for that arms company. Do you think that significant policy coherence issues still exist? We have talked about successes, but we have not talked about where there are some real tensions. You are working on and have been inputting into the wellbeing and sustainable development bill that is coming forward. Do you see a role for, say, a future generations commission providing some of the governance on sustainable development going forward?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
I have a brief question for Mark Majewsky Anderson. You mention in your submission the need to support new EU-based foundations. We have left the EU, but do you have examples of policy areas on which we can focus and should be focusing and developing new initiatives? Should we be looking to join existing EU foundations, as well as foundations that can work outside the EU?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
United Kingdom Internal Market
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
I want to ask about engagement and, in particular, about how you engage with different groups. With the EU there is very deep engagement at policy and implementation level, which stakeholders have been used to up until now. In terms of your role, how are you engaging in particular with businesses but also with other stakeholders, such as those representing consumers and perhaps even regulators? What does the programme of work look like? How are you ensuring that your work is transparent and that you are able to take on the views of, and communicate effectively with, those groups of stakeholders? Some detail on that would be most useful.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
United Kingdom Internal Market
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
I was watching the little video that introduces the role, which is useful particularly for consumers and others. You talk in that video about the health of the internal market. What do you define that as? What are the top health indicators?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Scottish Government’s International Work
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
I found some of David Hope-Jones’s comments about Malawi to be particularly sobering. I was there in 2005 and you could see back then what the climate impacts were, particularly in relation to the variability of rain. It is terrifying to think about what things might look like in years ahead.
David Hope-Jones mentioned the small grants programme in his submission. One thing that has stuck in my mind from going to Malawi is the impact of community-based organisations, which were doing a lot of work with very small amounts of money.
You said in your submission that the Scottish Government stopping the small grants programme was a “misstep”, and you point to some of the difficulties in the evaluation of the scheme. Can you say a bit more about that? How can the evaluation of small grants schemes be improved? Accounting for public money for development is really important, so how can we continue to do such work while building confidence that the money is going to the right places and achieving its objective?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
United Kingdom Internal Market
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
I have a brief follow-up question for the OIM. I am thinking about the common frameworks that have been established—there is one, for example, around waste and the circular economy. Some regulations are in place already—regulations that, in effect, made the cut and are emerging, such as deposit return schemes—and new regulations are coming forward that will come more fully into the remit of post-Brexit consideration of EU alignment or otherwise. How do you work with those? Is there, in effect, a firewall? You would not consider the deposit return scheme, for example, because that existed previously, although regulations can be updated over time. However, the common frameworks span all three areas and I am interested in where you draw the line, because some of them have contexts that affect each other.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
United Kingdom Internal Market
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
What does that look like practically? Can you give us a worked example of engagement on a particular issue? That might be useful.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
This week, we have seen tens of thousands of young people successfully applying for national entitlement cards, which will open the door to free bus travel across Scotland at the end of this month. We have also seen some schools and libraries help those who are the hardest to reach to apply for the card. What more guidance can the Government give to councils to ensure that those who could benefit most from the scheme successfully get their cards by the end of the month?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Mark Ruskell
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, have had some technical difficulties.
To ask the Scottish Government when the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands last met Marine Scotland to discuss Scotland’s marine assessment 2020. (S6O-00609)
