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 691 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
European Union Alignment
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
Thank you for that. I will come back in if I have anything else to ask.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
European Union Alignment
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
Lucy Ozanne, you talked about the increase in red meat sales to more than £100 million, which is to be welcomed. Is that because larger firms have managed to adapt better by finding new markets or ventures? It would be good to get your reflection on what has been happening with smaller firms. Have they managed to make progress in navigating some of the difficulties resulting from barriers, obstacles or friction?
We have heard from other sectors that smaller firms have to employ more staff or that extra levels are being added to their bureaucracy or administrative costs, and that managing that has been relatively prohibitive for their progress. It would be good to get your view on that.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
European Union Alignment
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
Mr Roberts, you have talked about developments and alignments in the process. If Scotland is to keep pace with developments in environmental laws as well as maintain alignment with EU standards, there might have to be frequent amendments in that respect. As we know, we get a tsunami of things regularly from the EU, but things will become more difficult if we are trying to keep that alignment. How do you see that developing? Is it going to be a problem?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
European Union Alignment
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
In that case, do you think that we have the capacity to achieve that?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
European Union Alignment
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Council Tax
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
Following on from that, I note that the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group believes that
“interactions of council tax ... with local and national taxes, universal credit and other welfare benefits”
have to be considered in the process; indeed, you have already touched on how that would be perceived. Trying to manage that sort of thing will be challenging, so can you give us a flavour of what you think will be the best way of doing that? As you have said, the process will certainly lead to speculation and people making assumptions about what things will look like, depending on how the issue of the interaction of the tax with the universal credit system and other benefits is tackled.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Council Tax
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Council Tax
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
Many issues have been touched on this morning, which is great. However, on the issue of finding consensus, which we have just been talking about, I note that the joint working group stated that it was trying to do that very thing and that a single option for reform was perhaps the best way forward. How realistic is it to get such an option, though, given that there will be winners and losers in the whole process? I will start with Professor Gibb.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Council Tax
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Council Tax
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alexander Stewart
You have suggested that the Scottish Government could phase in any changes that it chooses to make, even if they were more radical, by using the transitional relief scheme that has been discussed as a potential way of doing it. Wales has said what it has achieved when it worked on that, and you have indicated how other parts of the world have been able to achieve it.
However, it all comes back to cost. Whether it is affordable, manageable and sustainable will be the crux of the matter. What would be the likely cost to Scotland of a possible transitional relief scheme and of potentially more radical changes?
