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 927 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
That is an important point.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
However, you are not actively investing in them at the moment. My concern is that the Government has said that the fund is ending and that the matter will land on your desk in a few weeks’ time but, I presume, you do not have plans to invest £13 million in community renewables over the next year, so there is obviously a gap.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
Sticking with the key role of achieving a just transition to net zero, which is one of your main missions, the Government has a fund—the energy investment fund—to support community and commercial renewable energy projects. Are you familiar with it?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Smyth
So, under your current plan, you aim to reduce the 1,174 staff that you have at the moment to 894 by 2025-26, which is quite a substantial reduction. Are you saying that that may be revised because of the backlog?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Smyth
You have just lined up my colleague’s questions on contractors very nicely.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Smyth
You highlighted the work that your staff did during an incredibly challenging times, and they continue to do it as you change processes and deal with the backlog.
Your corporate plan suggests that there will be a 25 per cent reduction in staff numbers during the next five years, at a time when you are still having to deal with that backlog and changing your processes. What is the basis for that planned reduction in staff, and how will it be achieved in a way that will not impact on the huge amount of work that you have to do?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Smyth
That is a substantial reduction. What guarantees are there for staff, who have given a huge commitment at this difficult time, that there will be no compulsory redundancies and that you will ensure that people are found alternative employment across the public sector so that we can hold on to the skills that your team obviously have?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Smyth
Nobody could have prepared for the impact of the pandemic, but do you think that, because yours is a paper-based regime, you might have been caught out, and a lot of the work that you are now doing to digitise everything was not in place when the pandemic hit? Has that not caused huge challenges?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Tourism and Hospitality
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Colin Smyth
Politicians are very good at not answering the question, but you guys have managed to do something different by answering my question before I have asked it. What additional support for the sector should the Scottish Government be looking at next? I will give you a chance to briefly highlight any issues that you have not covered, so that we do not duplicate what has already been said.
I have a second question for each witness. You have made the point a number of times that some areas, especially city centres, have been hit hardest during the pandemic, and that some non-traditional tourism destinations in rural areas with fragile economies have had a boost due to staycations. Your emphasis seems to be on getting people back to places where they used to go. However, if we are serious about building an inclusive economy, surely there is an argument for trying to keep visitors in non-traditional tourism areas. Some of those areas have a very good offer but have simply not had visitors in those numbers in the past, for purely historical reasons rather than because of what they offered. Is there an untapped opportunity to grow the sector, rather than simply going back to what we used to do?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Tourism and Hospitality
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Colin Smyth
Thank you for that well-made point. I am sure that the committee will pick that up.
I will give Stephen Montgomery and Leon Thompson a chance to give us any brief final asks. How can we help the hospitality sector to live with Covid, to coin a phrase? It is likely to be with us in some form for some time to come.
I had a very good family meal at Stephen Montgomery’s hotel in Lockerbie on boxing day. I was struck by your point that you had not gone ahead with your usual Christmas day opening because you were uncertain as to where the Government was going with restrictions, and you did not want to have to cancel everything at the last minute.
10:30Is there anything that the Government needs to do regarding a future Covid framework that would give the hospitality sector a bit more certainty in respect of any response that we might have to take to the pandemic? Perhaps Stephen Montgomery can start, and then Leon Thompson can address the same point.
