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 1828 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Graham Simpson
I will widen the question for the other two witnesses. How confident are you that the economy in general can recover in the next year to 18 months, say? I will ask Susan Murray that first, and then Emma Congreve. Can you give us any Christmas cheer? Everyone seems to be a bit gloomy at the moment.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Graham Simpson
Thank you for agreeing to stay on for a bit.
I want to follow up on the previous line of questioning. The Just Transition Commission said that there should be a skills guarantee for workers in carbon-intensive industries, and I think that you committed to that. Will we be in a position to offer that guarantee? How would it look if there are not the jobs? Maybe there are the jobs but not the people.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Graham Simpson
I would like to ask Catriona Laing a question, if that would be okay.
Earlier, you mentioned regulations—I think that that was in relation to buildings. In the previous session of Parliament, I convened the tenement maintenance working group. As you will be aware, there are huge issues with a lot of Scotland’s properties, such as the problems of obtaining agreement from owners to get work done and figuring out how it will be paid for. The working group looked at those areas and produced some recommendations. The matter is now in the hands of the Scottish Law Commission. It will take years to resolve. I would be interested to get a bit more detail on what you are working on.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Graham Simpson
Good morning, minister. It is good to see you. I will ask some questions about the Climate Change Committee’s report but, first, I will pick up on something that you mentioned. You said that there would be a specific Grangemouth plan. When are we likely to see that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Graham Simpson
I accept that you are not the transport minister—she has my phone number; she can ring me any time; and she knows that I am prepared to work with her on all those matters. My door is open, if hers is.
I know that you are not the transport minister, but your brief covers a lot of areas. If we are to get people away from driving petrol and diesel cars, something else has to be in place. We will have to persuade them to use public transport more and/or use vehicles that are not powered by petrol or diesel, such as electric vehicles.
We are doing quite well with the charging network, but there is a long way to go. At the moment, there are 2,400 charging places, but the aim is to have 30,000 within the next seven years. There is a long, long way to go. As we know, many of those charging points do not work. That unreliability factor is not going to persuade people to switch to electric vehicles. Do you accept that that is a challenge, and do you accept that, despite the progress that we have made, we need to do better on electric vehicles?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Graham Simpson
So we will see that along with the other plans, probably by the end of June.
The Climate Change Committee’s report is pretty damning. It has published a table, which is useful, so I will go through it. On transport, the milestone for no new fossil fuel car sales by 2030 is “Slightly off track” and the Scottish Government’s policy of a 20 per cent reduction on 2019 car kilometres by 2030 is “Significantly off track”. On the low-carbon heat milestone, it is “Too early to say” and the energy efficiency milestone is “Significantly off track”. Afforestation is “Slightly off track” and peatland restoration “Significantly off track”. Recycling rates are also “Significantly off track”. If that was a school report for you, minister, you would be kept in after school, would you not?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Graham Simpson
I will focus on transport because, as you know, it is the biggest emitter of carbon. The Just Transition Commission has also focused on transport. It says that
“Scotland’s public transport network requires vast improvement and must be made more affordable”
and it talks about ScotRail capacity needing to be expanded, not reduced.
In the report that has come out today, the Climate Change Committee says:
“Plans to decarbonise transport in Scotland are falling behind ... Scotland has a laudable aim to reduce car-kilometres by 20% on 2019 levels ... This is a challenging goal and current plans lack a full strategy”.
There is no strategy and there are no policies in place to achieve that, are there?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Graham Simpson
That is interesting. I would caution against using regulations but, if you use them, they will have to be trailed in advance. When you are, in essence, forcing people to spend money, that is very controversial and difficult to do, if not impossible.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition Commission
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Graham Simpson
Okay. That is fair enough.
I will ask one more question about transport. The report says that the commission thinks that there should be
“an overhaul of regional and local public transport provision and infrastructure”.
Did you go into any detail on that? What did you mean by that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition Commission
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Graham Simpson
I read the section in the report that focuses on the rural parts of Scotland and how poorly served they are in many respects. The report mentions ferry services. Obviously, you have been out to an island. It cannot all be about money, can it? Do you have any thoughts about how we might restructure the transport system? That is a big question, of course.
