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 3436 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
John Mason
As people know, I am a committee substitute, so I am not quite as familiar with some of the issues as colleagues are. Coming in from the outside, my feeling was that the idea of a just transition fund should be quite clear cut and in a space that nothing else is in. However, I have heard this morning about things such as planting trees or getting an electric vehicle in order to get money quickly and spend it. I would have thought that both of those things could have happened elsewhere and that a just transition fund was not needed to make them happen. Maybe I am being slightly cynical, but is it simply about more money for things that we are already trying to do, or is there a specific space for that fund?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
John Mason
Perhaps the process could be led by the three local authorities.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
John Mason
Although you are not actually elected, are you?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
John Mason
I will leave it at that, convener.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
John Mason
We have covered quite a lot of ground, and some of the issues that I planned to mention have been touched on already. Much of our focus has been on how communities can feed in to the process. Local authorities’ written input has been about how the councils—three, in this case—rather than central Government could perhaps be more in control of the whole fund. Earlier it was suggested that central Government rules are making it very difficult to put such an approach into practice. Should the whole fund have been more under the control of local authorities, or should it now be?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
John Mason
One aspect that has been specifically referred to is the one-year window: we must have a consultation, make decisions and spend the money all within a year. Of course, to some extent, local authorities also have that problem. I know that they are always complaining that they want multiyear funding. If local authorities were running matters with this fund for 10 years, would you be better able to deal with that and give community groups more of a spread of time? Mr Bews, please answer that if you want to.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
John Mason
I think that Aberdeenshire Council raised the idea that the just transition fund should be aligned with other economic plans, such as the regional economic strategy. I realise that that council is not here today, so maybe you can comment on that. We have heard a bit about duplication, but are those things currently aligned or could they be better aligned? Is that a problem or is it not a problem?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
John Mason
I realise that my questions have been mainly for the local authorities, so I will give Mr Ross and Ms Stuart the opportunity to answer. Do you have any thoughts? Should we have more decision-making power at local authority level, or should we forget central Government and local authorities and focus entirely on communities?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
John Mason
As a committee, we have to go back and say whether it is a good or a bad financial memorandum. Which do you think that we should say?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
John Mason
From a slightly different angle but on the same subject, the financial memorandum states that the costs that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency might get or need in relation to the disposal of unsold consumer goods range from £30,000 to £200,000, the latter being if it was more proactive. I find that interesting because it is a very wide range and it brings in the issue of being proactive, which I did not particularly see elsewhere in relation to either councils or anyone else. That raises the wider question of whether you want to be more proactive. Do you need to be more proactive, and would that really cost seven times more than if you did the minimum?
