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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 309 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Ash Regan
Okay. Russell, this is your opportunity to add something.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Ash Regan
Good morning. You have all suggested, in different ways, that the vessels that are procured by CMAL are inefficient and overspecified. You have been quite critical of the idea of unique designs. Will you say a little more about that? Is there any reason that is particular to Scotland—to do with, for example, the sea conditions here—that would mean that a unique design is appropriate for Scotland?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Ash Regan
I will move on. The committee has heard that some routes might be better served by two or maybe more smaller vessels rather than one large boat. I am thinking of the Loch Seaforth on the Ullapool to Stornoway route, where I know that the local community would have preferred to have had two smaller boats rather than one large vessel. I can see that having more boats would probably increase resilience; that seems obvious. It might provide a boost to the local community and so on, but are there downsides to that? We have talked about increased staffing. Would that increase operational costs? What do you think?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Ash Regan
Thank you for that. Do other members of the panel have anything to say about overspecification?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Ash Regan
That answer is helpful. Are you able to share that next-level-down detail with the committee so that we are able to look at it?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Ash Regan
Good morning. Given that the Scottish Government has set out its intention to grow renewable electricity production, do you agree that it would be useful to improve the infrastructure? I am thinking in particular about the north and the north-east of the country, where the infrastructure is obviously unable to support the transition that we are talking about. A number of roads require to be upgraded, potentially for that purpose, but also to address safety concerns.
The budget line for motorways and trunk roads stands at £801 million, which represents a reduction from the previous two years’ allocations, and the line for roads improvements also shows a reduction. We have had a conversation about the financial context, which I understand, but will you set out for the committee what has been prioritised—obviously, I acknowledge the reduction in the budget—and what has been deprioritised?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Ash Regan
Thank you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Declaration of Interests
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Ash Regan
Good morning, convener. I have no relevant interests to declare.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Ash Regan
As Martin Brown has said and as the committee will know, there are a number of initiatives in this area. We are all clear that better communication is beneficial, and I am sure that the Crown Office and the SCTS will look at that issue in the work that they are taking forward.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Ash Regan
The first thing to be clear about is that this work is being carried out by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service as part of its evidence and procedure review. It is working on this to encourage appropriate early resolution of summary criminal cases, which—as you rightly pointed out—might reduce the number of summary criminal cases that go into the court system. However, I stress that we think that that would happen only for those cases where that is appropriate.
The pilots are taking place in Dundee, Hamilton and Paisley, and they started on 5 September. They are an attempt to look at ways in which efficiency and other things can be improved, and I think that they will bring benefits across the whole system. They will benefit the accused, and I am also quite clear that they will benefit victims and the court system.
The pilots look to resolve cases at the earliest opportunity without the need for a trial to be fixed, reduce the need for full disclosure where cases can be resolved, reduce the number of cases that are called for trial, reduce the number of witnesses who are called unnecessarily and preserve trials for cases that cannot easily be resolved by other means. As I said, there are benefits to doing those things.
The regulations, specifically those that are in front of you, remove a barrier that exists in the system, so maybe an appropriate way to describe the situation is by saying that many of the cases that will be involved would have gone on to court when, perhaps—with the right fee arrangement—it would be more appropriate for them to have been resolved earlier. I hope that that answers your question.
