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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 192 contributions
|
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Richard Lochhead
If there was one subject that kept me awake at night—other than the impact of climate change if we do not deal with it—it would be our plans in Scotland for people and skills. Why is that a concern for me? In Scotland, we are in the strange position of having low unemployment but significant labour shortages, particularly in some sectors.
We have enormous economic opportunities. If we get the energy transition right, we will be able to make Scotland one of the most successful economic countries in the world, but we need the people and the skills for that to happen. A lot of people ask where we will get the skills from, but you are right to ask where we will get the people from. It is not just a question of whether people have the skills; it is about where we will get the people from. We have certain demographic trends in Scotland, we have no power over immigration policy, and we have had Brexit. That has tightened things up and has made the situation quite challenging.
You said that every company mentions the issue to you, and I speak to companies about it all the time. Some companies are confident that, if they get the go-ahead for X or Y project, they have the people to deliver it, but other companies say that they have vacancies. Scottish Power and other companies have said that they have hundreds of vacancies in certain areas that would help with the transition to net zero. They say that they could employ people tomorrow in those roles if they had the people to fill them. There is therefore quite a varied picture.
I am sorry to dwell on the CCS Acorn project, but the position in which we have ended up with it is so frustrating. One of my key concerns is that, if we are not the first mover, skilled people leave. The feedback from the CCS sector in Scotland and the rest of the UK is that, because the UK Government is taking so long with things, a lot of the skilled people are going to work in America or other European countries that are racing ahead of Scotland and the rest of the UK on CCS. We cannot afford to lose those people. We must be first movers and get going, otherwise we will lose thousands of skilled people who will say, “I’ll just go and work over there, because there’s no job for me here.”
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Richard Lochhead
There is a lot of work going on in that area, which is important. The big picture is that, as I said, we have really good companies that have perhaps grown out of the oil and gas sector or other sectors in Scotland and are now looking to the future and gearing up for the green energy revolution, for instance. They are all gearing up for that, but they need the projects to happen. Some of the orders are beginning to come to fruition.
Offshore Energies UK, which is the trade body, is mapping out the supply chain at the moment. That is a really good exercise, and I think that it will share the results with us shortly. The committee might wish to speak to that body, because the supply chain is a crucial aspect, as so many jobs are in supply chains. If we want to get the just transition jobs and new jobs in new industries, we need new supply chains. That trade body is mapping out all that in the private sector.
The Scottish Government is working on the local content agreements and the commitments on the £1.4 billion-worth of business that is expected to come from each ScotWind bid, of which there are 20. That could be a lot of money for supply chains and the Scottish economy, if we get a big chunk of that. I am sure that we will not get it all, but we will get a big chunk of it. There is £1.4 billion from each project that could come to Scotland if we get that right.
Finally, there is the collaboration space that the Scottish Government is pushing in order to bring the supply chains in Scotland together with the offshore wind developers. The aim is to ensure that they are collaborating and forging a close relationship before we get to the later stages, so that we capture more of the business. That collaborative area is important.
