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 942 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 26 April 2023
Colin Smyth
In the past, the Government promised 120,000 new jobs by 2020, but the Fraser of Allander Institute recently did a piece of work that concluded that 27,000 jobs had been created. One of the institute’s criticisms was that it had to work out what a renewables job was, because it could not measure it. Are you confident that you will be measuring what you want to have in that plan, or will you have to start to measure new things, too?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Colin Smyth
Professor Skea, can I follow up on your point about looking at what data or information is already there? There must be gaps. The Fraser of Allander Institute recently carried out work to measure the economic impact of the renewables sector and concluded that 27,000 jobs had been created, but the institute had to define that for itself, because there was no definition of a renewables job. There must be gaps in what we are measuring.
My main point is not about what we measure or the figure at the moment; it is about what the actual target is. It will be easy for ministers to stand up and say that things are fabulous and that we have created a certain number of jobs as a result of the just transition, but how do we know that that figure should not have been five or 10 times higher? We need to see genuine targets for a just transition. At the moment, the energy plan targets for onshore wind seem to be about how much power is generated, but how do we get targets that measure specifically whether that generation is creating a just transition?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Colin Smyth
Do you want that to be incorporated in the Government’s final just transition plan and the various sectoral plans?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Colin Smyth
I think that Elliot Ross would like to comment on that.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Colin Smyth
I presume that there also need to be targets so that we can measure how many jobs have been created. Onshore wind is a prime example. The target in the energy strategy to produce 12GW of onshore wind is great, but communities across Scotland tell us that, at the moment, the turbines are not built in Scotland, so we know that there is a gap there. Surely, as well as knowing how many jobs are created, the plans should give us specific targets for the number of jobs that should be created.
I will use the example of offshore wind. How many supply chain jobs should be created in Scotland as a result of ScotWind? Surely we should have a target for that, against which we can measure progress. That way, we will be able to measure not just how many jobs have been created but how we have done against the target.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Colin Smyth
You very diplomatically did not say what the Governments need to do, but you make fairly valid points.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Colin Smyth
You will be pleased to know that you have already answered just about every question that I had. I am going to turn the discussion around a bit.
The message so far is that we have these ambitious targets for net zero but the UK Climate Change Committee has been pretty scathing of the UK and Scottish Governments for not having a plan in place yet to meet those targets. You have all said that the good news—notwithstanding the risk associated with new technologies—is that there is substantial funding available, although the Governments are not using the policy levers to make sure that that funding comes forward.
We are not the Government; we are a parliamentary committee. What do you think are the barriers preventing the Governments from enabling you to bring forward that finance? Why are the Governments it not putting forward those policy changes and what do we need to do as a committee to change that? Other than getting on with the job, what would you like to see the Governments change? What do they need to change to enable that funding to come forward? Do not worry: you can be as frank and as critical as you wish. It is okay—we will not tell them what you say.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Colin Smyth
The idea of presenting net zero as the path to growth, not the barrier to it is interesting.
Ben Howarth, you have said that the ABI has done research that showed that you can contribute up to £1 trillion towards some of these long term projects. Why is the Government not biting your hand off to get that to happen?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Colin Smyth
I will bring in Adam Gillies to give a view on whether the community feels that it is involved in those initiatives, but maybe you can get your rebuttal in first, Diarmaid. How do you involve the community? I detect from the delivery of the action plan that there is a lot of frustration in the community that a lot of things are happening, but they are not benefiting the community. How are you bringing the community into that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Colin Smyth
Adam Gillies, the greener Grangemouth project sounds like a great thing, with heavy community involvement. In what way could the community be better involved in some of that work?
