Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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Meeting of the Parliament

Innovation Strategy

Meeting date: 20 June 2023

Marie McNair

Scotland has a rich history when it comes to innovation. While we celebrate the achievements of the past, it is important for our focus to be firmly on the future. Neighbouring countries such as Ireland, Denmark and Norway have shown just how successfully innovative small nations can be. It is crucial that we follow their lead and prioritise putting innovation at the heart of a thriving Scottish economy. If we do not do that, we risk being left behind.

The strategy that we are debating is undoubtedly exciting and bold. In Scotland, we have some of the finest research institutes, colleges, universities and businesses in the world. However, what has been missing is a coherent strategy to link all those elements—a proper road map that spells out how to turn research into successful products and businesses and how the Scottish Government can support scaling up.

In Clydebank, we have seen at first hand how innovative technologies bring benefits to a community. For example, the Queens Quay development features Scotland’s first major water-source heat pump system, which will heat water from the River Clyde and distribute it to customers through a district heating network. That project, which was supported by the Scottish Government’s low-carbon infrastructure transition fund, is a fine working example of research being turned into a successful product, supported by the Scottish Government, and delivering benefits to my constituents.

I hope that, as the strategy is implemented, more such successes will occur across Scotland. I often hear from businesses with great ideas that their biggest challenge is securing the funding to deliver. I am therefore particularly encouraged by the strategy’s focus on routes to invest.

Generating funding from private enterprises alongside ring fencing further public sector spending will be vital if the strategy is to succeed. In my constituency, I have been working with the Malin Group on an ambitious project to deliver a Scottish marine technology park, which would provide a unique environment for world-leading innovators in the marine industry and allow them to create a self-sustaining ecosystem that would reinvigorate shipbuilding and renewable industries on the banks of the Clyde and beyond. The key barrier to development is funding, so I am pleased that the strategy outlines how the Scottish Government will work with such projects to bring the investment that they need and to drive collaboration with key partners.

I welcome the renewed focus on the positive contributions that our colleges make to the innovation ecosystem. Too often, they have been deprioritised, but I am pleased that colleges such as West College Scotland, in my constituency, are at the heart of the strategy. Every business that I speak to talks of skill shortages, so it is important to support our colleges as they work to provide Scotland with the skilled workforce that it needs to drive innovation.

In Scotland, we have the natural capital, talented workforce and sectoral strengths to build a thriving economy, but too many of the powers that are needed to deliver our vision lie at Westminster. We need to be free from Brexit and right-wing immigration policies that harm our economic and social prospects.