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 2867 contributions
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COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
John Mason
Do you think that it is different in practice in other countries or are they just facing the same issues in a slightly different way?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
John Mason
That is a reasonable answer but, in five or 10 years, there will be—on the whole—a different lot of politicians around the table, and I do not know how willing they will be to put resources into preventative spend.
We mentioned Professor Morris and his report, and you said that the Government was considering the interim report. Is the Government responding to him at this point, or are you waiting for the final report?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
John Mason
That is very helpful in allowing us to understand the way ahead.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
John Mason
I think that we are now at the stage where, whether I ask you a question in the Finance and Public Administration Committee or in this committee, I am asking similar questions—we are very much overlapping with other committees. I will build on the cost side of things. We heard evidence, which has already been mentioned today, that we will need higher levels of stock of PPE, for example. There might be laboratories that were built or created during the pandemic that we are mothballing but keeping in place. I wonder how we get the balance right. I go back to the question of preventative spend. So much of the work of preparing for another pandemic involves preventative spend, which is a good thing, but we are facing these pressures, which you have just been discussing with Mr Rowley.
Therefore, how do you see that work going forward—not just this year but in future years? How do we get the balance right between being prepared and reacting to what is happening now?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
John Mason
That is super. I would like to ask quite a few other questions, but I will be specific. You said that a key aim is to have a health system that is strong and robust to start with. Some people might say that we should have hundreds of extra beds in hospitals, sitting empty most of the time, so that when a pandemic or similar event comes along we are all ready for it. Obviously, that would come with a cost. Do you have any thoughts on how we balance spending on preventative measures and spending on reactive measures? Clearly, we are under financial pressure at the moment, and having labs or hospitals sitting empty has a cost.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
John Mason
Yes, please—that would be helpful.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Finances 2023-24 (Impact of Cost of Living and Public Service Reform)
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
John Mason
My constituency has a whole load of sandstone tenements, which are incredibly difficult to retrofit. I accept that it is expensive, but I sometimes wonder whether we should do more of it.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Finances 2023-24 (Impact of Cost of Living and Public Service Reform)
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
John Mason
I want to pursue that, because we have not touched on housing until now. What would be the practical impact on housing associations if the freeze continued beyond March and they had less income? Would you cut back on maintenance and things like that?
My other point is on capital expenditure. What is your thinking in that respect? We are going to build more houses, but should we be doing more on the retrofit side to try to improve heating costs and so on? Have we got the right balance between retrofit and building new houses? The Passivhaus approach comes into that; I have such buildings in my constituency, and they have been built to a very high standard, although I think that they were more expensive. How do we strike the right balance?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Finances 2023-24 (Impact of Cost of Living and Public Service Reform)
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
John Mason
I will stick to the same theme. As David Lonsdale is sitting next to me, I want to ask the Scottish Retail Consortium how it—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Finances 2023-24 (Impact of Cost of Living and Public Service Reform)
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
John Mason
Oh, right. That is good timing.
If I understood the SRC’s submission, it would like business rates to be lower and it would probably like income tax to be lower, too, so that consumers have more money to spend in the shops. Would you, like Unison, take the view that we could raise some of our taxes to compensate for that? Where do you see the balance between raising taxes and losing money?
