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 1694 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
Is that question for Siobhan McDermit or Neil Francis?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
I thank the witnesses very much. That brings us to the end of the evidence session and concludes the public part of the meeting.
12:16 Meeting continued in private until 12:37.Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
I have a final question for Neil Francis. Siobhan McDermit described what—I will get the acronym right—SDI does. Do you do proactive work as well? Do you promote the idea of online sales as well as supporting it? You described what you do when a business comes to you, but do you promote what you are able to do?
You also talked about the changes that came from exiting the EU. When we were in Dumfries, we visited a specialist shop that does online sales as well. The people there told me that they sell a lot down south, specifically to London, but they said that their European sales have really dropped since we left the EU. There is a difference in taxation, and selling online is different from how it was before our exit from the EU. Is that a common experience? How do we rebuild confidence in those areas?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
We will have to make some progress as we are pushed for time.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
Alexander Burnett is joining us online.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
Thank you very much. I thank our four witnesses for their contributions. I briefly suspend the meeting while we change to a new panel of witnesses.
11:21 Meeting suspended.11:27 On resuming—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
Will you reflect on how the retail sector has changed and the kind of support Business Gateway has provided? You mentioned the digital boost project, but how have the sector and the type of support that you offer changed?
11:30Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
Scottish Enterprise has previously supported Amazon—a development in my region at Dunfermline has had support, and that is retail. Would the argument that supporting one retailer might have an impact on another not hold for other sectors, too, and for any business that is in a competitive field?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
Good morning and welcome to the 12th meeting in 2022 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Our first item of business is a decision on whether to take item 4 in private. Do members agree to take item 4 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Claire Baker
Our next item of business is the continuation of our town centres and retail inquiry. The broad theme for today’s meeting is e-commerce and opportunities for Scottish businesses. The committee will hear evidence from two panels. I welcome the first panel: Gillian Crawford, managing director at Lily Blanche; Carolyn Currie, chief executive of Women’s Enterprise Scotland; Stuart Mackinnon, head of communications and public affairs at the Federation of Small Businesses Scotland; and Dr Peter Mowforth, chief executive of Indez. Thank you all for coming.
As always, I ask members and witnesses to keep their questions and answers as concise as possible. The witnesses may not be asked to respond to every question, but they will get an opportunity to speak during the evidence session. I will ask the first question, and will give all our witnesses an opportunity to have a brief go at it.
During the evidence that we have heard so far, there has been a discussion about the role of e-commerce. Some contend that it is an undue threat to high streets and that it is one of the contributing factors in the demise of high streets because everybody shops online now, and nobody goes down to their high street. Is that how you see e-commerce in the future? What do you think is its relevance? Is it a threat to the high street or does it have something positive to bring to the high street? I will bring in Gillian Crawford first.
