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 3424 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Scotland’s Links with the Arctic
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
Absolutely. When we went back last year, we met the same industry representatives that Gillian Martin and I had met several years before, and it was interesting to see the development of that licensing regime over that time. Again, we had interesting discussions with colleagues from Orkney who are now looking to develop such an industry there.
Learning cuts in lots of directions and, following the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee’s meeting in Reykjavík with members of the Icelandic Environment and Communications Committee, which Fiona Hyslop has mentioned, the Icelandic committee made a visit to Holyrood in January, and we had a productive discussion about how onshore wind has been developed in Scotland and what Iceland can learn from us in that regard.
As a number of members have said, it is clear that our greatest shared endeavour is to save the Arctic from the ravages of climate change, for the sake of all humanity. Katrín Jakobsdóttir, the Green Prime Minister of Iceland summed up the situation well in her speech to the Arctic Circle assembly last year, when she said:
“The Arctic may become unrecognizable in a few decades if we do not act sufficiently today. Everything is changing ... We see glaciers receding, permafrost is melting, heat records are beaten and forests are burning. And all this is happening much faster in the Arctic—where the ecosystem is sensitive and the resources are great.”
Alongside Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon globally, Katrín Jakobsdóttir has been instrumental in leading the shift in thinking to deliver a wellbeing economy—an economy whose foundations are ecologically restorative but also socially fair and just. As we move forward to the election of a new First Minister in Scotland, I hope that that wellbeing economy mission remains central to the Government and that we take on the challenges and threats to the Arctic, her nature and her people, together, as one.
16:17Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I am sure that the First Minister will join me in offering the Parliament’s sincere condolences to the family and friends of all those impacted by the tragic fire at the Shore Recycling centre in Perth early on Tuesday morning. That devastating incident is deeply concerning, not least because it is the second fire in six months at the site.
In the days to come, our emergency services will attempt to establish the facts of the situation. Does the First Minister agree that, following Tuesday’s incident, there must be an investigation into the circumstances of the fire to ensure that such a tragedy does not happen again?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
Will Colin Smyth take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I have more to say.
Three years after the Scottish Parliament approved our deposit return scheme, the UK Government has, in recent months, made tentative suggestions that there will be a separate scheme for England from 2025. Some members immediately called for the Scottish scheme to be dropped so that we could align with a non-existent UK Government scheme. Does the minister agree that that path would have been disastrous for the environment and businesses?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking, in partnership with the Scottish Prison Service, national health service boards and others to support the health and wellbeing of people in prison and prevent deaths by suicide. (S6O-01946)
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. According to a University of Glasgow report, there has been a 42 per cent rise in lives lost to suicide in Scottish prisons since 2016. Last year’s progress report on the “Independent Review of the Response to Deaths in Prison Custody” showed that uptake of the review’s recommendations has been disappointingly slow. Therefore, can the cabinet secretary provide reassurances that progress is being accelerated towards implementing all the recommendations in the review?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
The revelations that we have heard this afternoon about the secretary of state are truly shocking. His comments are misleading and he should resign. [Laughter.]
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I thank Edward Mountain for taking an intervention. In his capacity as convener of the committee, can he confirm to the chamber that the Labour Party voted for that SSI when it came to the committee?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2023
Mark Ruskell
My questioning follows on from that point, convener. Mr Wilcock, you were talking about the ring-binder approach to the islands connectivity plan. Can we get a sense of where the other parts of the plan will slot in, and the formal timetable for its adoption?
Coming out of that, there is a question about why the long-term plan for vessels and ports has been published ahead of the community needs assessment. Will you give a little more detail as to what is coming, when it is coming and why the decision was made in particular to publish that piece of work on vessels and ports ahead of the one on community needs?
