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 2013 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
Okay. Thank you.
Paragraphs 34 and 35 are particularly interesting. The first bullet point in paragraph 34 states:
“Other directorates in the Scottish Government or councils will also decide where to locate services such as hospitals and schools which will affect the extent to which people need to travel.”
Paragraph 35 states that
“Councils have requested further guidance and support from the Scottish Government”
and so on. What type of guidance are they asking for? I have a particular question on this issue, but I am keen to understand that first.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
Okay.
Paragraph 27 on page 16 of the report states:
“Recent policy decisions suggest that the Scottish Government has deprioritised the target in the face of growing financial pressures, for example the peak fares reversal ... and reducing funding for active travel.”
That is just an opinion from you. Do you have anything to fully back that up?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
That is a valid area, with a variety of elements, to look at. It is not just about the charging points and vehicles, which are not cheap. The higher-range electric vehicles are certainly more reliable compared with those at the lower range.
On the economic perspective, I refer to a report that was published earlier this month by the Loughborough centre for research in public policy, which highlighted that 24 million people in the UK are below socially unacceptable living standards. The economic challenge of purchasing an electric vehicle prohibits people who want to do the right thing from doing so.
11:15Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
I have a range of questions on things that are dotted throughout the report. Before I get into them, I want to follow on from Colin Beattie’s questions about the additional information that is to be sent to the committee. Can that be put alongside the report on the Audit Scotland website to help to provide background?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
I genuinely think that paragraph 35 is a cop-out, to be honest. There are some urban authorities that will have rural parts to them, but I accept the point about more solely rural local authority areas. Once again, however, I think of my constituency, and an area that has been suggested for a housing development. It is equidistant between two train stations, and it is just off a trunk road. The only way to get to any of the train stations will be to drive.
Active travel routes can be put in, but in my area, it rains quite a lot, so they will not be used a great deal. The only way to get to somewhere is to get on to a trunk road that is already congested at peak times. Despite folk highlighting concerns, however, the measures are still being progressed.
That is what has been going on from a planning perspective. Councils do not need any additional guidance on planning—they know their area better than any Government of any colour or stripe would do. For me, paragraph 35 of the report really is a cop-out, when I consider what is going on in my patch.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
I have a 20-minute neighbourhoods example, but I will not go into it today, because I can talk to you about it another time.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
Sure. With regard to paragraph 45 of the report, and the “detailed analysis”, do you have any indication of the cost of the reports involved in that?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
There is an excellent story to tell. I only found out a few weeks ago about what ScotRail offers, because I was dealing with it on behalf of a constituent. I put the point to ScotRail that it needs to tell more people about its openness and its offer to help people. ScotRail told me that, as a consequence of that offer, more people with disabilities are travelling on the rail network as opposed to sitting at home and doing nothing.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
That ties into paragraph 14, which is on page 11, and exhibit 8, which is on page 37, with regard to areas that are outwith the Scottish Parliament’s powers. A potential suggestion is—dare I say it—to reduce fuel duty, which would impact on bus travel overall. Paragraph 67 mentions bus operators cancelling services and the many challenges that they face. If bus travel was cheaper, more people would certainly be aided and encouraged to use that form of transport. Surely a discussion could be had about passing on a reduction in fuel duty to bus operators in order to reduce the cost of tickets.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Stuart McMillan
Paragraph 16 covers an issue that has been under discussion for some time. I always read Audit Scotland’s overarching reports through the prism of how it will affect my Greenock and Inverclyde constituency. There has been past dialogue about a Glasgow airport rail link, and now there is discussion about a metro scheme, but every option that has come forward would have a negative impact on public transport usage in Inverclyde and would reduce services from Inverclyde to Glasgow.
I have a meeting with the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport about the issue on Friday, but surely any proposals or projects that come forward, whether from SPT or anyone else in the country, should add to public transport usage; they should not be at its expense.
