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 922 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Electronic Trade Documents Bill
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
It really just comes back to the fact that, in the few years since we left the European Union, there have been a few examples of delays in trade because of paper documents having to be used. I was wondering how far down that goes and whether the bill affects things at the level of, for example, food exports. Some of that process has become digital over recent years, but I wonder whether such parts of the process would be digitised as standard now. I will look further into the issue.
Will there be a uniform approach across the UK single market, or is there potential for having different regulations and requirements within the UK?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Therefore, those cases are not urgent. There will not be much of an impact, in the sense that the cases that are being left are historical cases.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
On that, it is important to engage with your customers and look for that feedback, particularly on the business side, but across all sides. I think that there are 2,435 cases open from 2007. You would expect that a higher proportion of those customers might be less satisfied—let us put it positively—than is the case for the 20,598 cases that are open from 2019. I take it that you would expect a higher proportion of customers with those earlier cases to be dissatisfied because of the time that has passed, so why do you not collect that information?
10:30Economy and Fair Work Committee
Consumer Scotland
Meeting date: 24 May 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
You are talking about growth. Given the circumstances, there is demand in a wide variety of areas. How do you see that growth happening? How will you resource it, budget-wise and people-wise? Do you see that being an increasing burden on how you do things?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Consumer Scotland
Meeting date: 24 May 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Are you confident that you have brought something new to the sector and that what you have offered in one year and, looking forward, what you will offer is new and different and would not have been there without you?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Consumer Scotland
Meeting date: 24 May 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
As David Wilson said, you are not public-facing, but public awareness is important. Is there public awareness of the organisation and an understanding of your role? Do you get contact from individuals that you then have to put to other people? Gordon MacDonald talked about the multiplication of databases. Is there an understanding of what you offer and how you offer it?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Consumer Scotland
Meeting date: 24 May 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
One of our concerns when we were considering the bill was the potential for duplication—as my colleague Graham Simpson said, there was already advice being given. Have you seen a contraction in other parts of the advice sector, where some of their responsibilities are now with you? What has been the impact on the wider sector?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Consumer Scotland
Meeting date: 24 May 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Good morning, panel. Sam, you said that because Consumer Scotland has a large remit, you have to prioritise. Is the remit too broad?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish Government Policy Priorities (Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy)
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
I am trying to remember the figure for the liability. In 2019, it was roughly £570 million. That will have decreased, so do you know what the current liability is?
10:15Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish Government Policy Priorities (Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy)
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
I will move to another vital area. We know that there is huge pressure on our tourism and hospitality sectors. Cabinet secretary, I am sure that you will have had plenty of representations from those sectors about the pressures that they are facing, and you will have seen the gaps in the high streets and the issues that local areas are facing. A number of eligible businesses in England are receiving a 75 per cent discount on business rates bills this year. That money was available through Barnett consequentials. Has there been any consideration about introducing a similar discount in Scotland?
