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 1521 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 30 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
Good morning, cabinet secretaries. My first few questions are for the cabinet secretary for rural affairs and are about peatland and natural resources.
It is my understanding that £250 million has been allocated over 10 years for peatland restoration and that £66.7 million of that fund has been allocated in the past three years. According to evidence that we took from NatureScot, £40 million of that had been spent up to and including 2022-23. How much has been spent in 2023-24?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 30 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
I might have missed the figure for last year. My ears are not working right.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 30 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
What were any underspends used for? Were they used to address barriers to scaling up peatland restoration?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 30 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
Convener, I am finding it a bit difficult to hear people. I do not know if that is because of my ears or the microphones. The sound is slightly muffled.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 30 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
It could just be me.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 30 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
Yes. I am sorry about that.
Cabinet secretary, as you said, natural resources and peatlands are within your portfolio. I understand what peatlands are, but can you expand on what is meant by natural resources?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 30 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
I am not sure that I do at this point, convener. Can I come back in later?
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
The MV Isle of Islay is an exciting prospect for islanders, as is the MV Loch Indaal. The vessel represents an investment of more than £90 million and is proof of the Government’s commitment to providing communities with a resilient and reliable ferry service. [Interruption.] The new vessel will bring—
Meeting of the Parliament
Holocaust Memorial Day 2024
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
I thank Paul O’Kane for securing the debate on this important issue, and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for all the work that it does. I also thank Paul O’Kane in advance for hosting the Scottish national Holocaust event next week, when the Parliament will welcome pupils from Northfield academy in my constituency, who I believe will be speaking at the event. I am always pleased to see young folk from Aberdeen coming into our Parliament.
As the motion notes, the theme of this year’s Holocaust memorial day is “Fragility of Freedom”. Over the past few years and across the world, people’s freedoms feel much more fragile.
When I was younger, I remember thinking of the Holocaust as a one-off tragedy—an act of unspeakable evil, carried out by evil folk, who just kind of disappeared at the end of the war. Over the years—especially the past few years—I have come to realise that the Holocaust and other genocides are at the end of what tends to be a long journey. I have come to realise that the folk who carried out those acts were not always evil—that they were once quite ordinary, and that many went back to living ordinary lives. I have come to realise that saying, “Never again,” is, sadly, just an aspiration rather than the promise that it should be.
I have also come to realise how many challenges the groups that were targeted in the Holocaust continue to face. Can any of us say, hand on heart, that, in the past few months, we have not seen, at home or abroad, any bigotry and discrimination that is aimed at Jews, Gypsy Travellers, those with disabilities, or the LGBT+ community? I cannot say so. I think that those things are becoming more common and, in some circles, are starting to be seen as acceptable.
That situation is very dangerous, and we need to challenge it whenever and wherever we see it, because, before the death camps, there was the discrimination, the dehumanisation and the turning of folk against their own fellow man. I fear that we are not doing enough to prevent that from happening again.
When the details of the Holocaust first emerged, folk reacted with horror, and the world said, “Never again.” However, in the years since, and with varying degrees of recognition, we have continued to see that sort of atrocity. We saw mass killings in Guatemala and said, “Never again.” We saw them in Bangladesh and said, “Never again.” We saw them in East Timor and said, “Never again.” We have seen them in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Zaire, Darfur, Iraq, Syria and Myanmar, and we keep saying, “Never again.” In the years to come, when that list is, inevitably, even longer, will we just keep on saying, “Never again”?
Looking ahead, instead of just saying, “Never again”, we need to say, loudly and clearly, what we are saying today—as individuals and as a nation, at home and abroad. When we see discrimination, dehumanisation, persecution, and mass killings, we need to call those for what they are and call for them to stop. That is the least that we can do to show that we have learned the lessons of history, and to make “Never again” a reality.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Jackie Dunbar
I am sorry, Presiding Officer—I never quite heard you because of the chuntering.
Does the minister share my view that, although it is all very well to play politics, we should all welcome the news of progress on all vessels to improve services for our island communities?
