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 1734 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Fair Work Convention
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
I agree with everything that you have said, but my question was: what assessment have you made of the economic barriers that your key stakeholders—employees, employers and the Scottish Government—face? I agree that fair work is enmeshed in economic choices. However, even today, we have talked about sick pay and zero-hours contracts, which, of course, come under employment law. We have not touched much on the issue of the gig economy generally. I am trying to work out what assessment you have made of the economic blockers and barriers.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Fair Work Convention
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
I will raise a point that is more about finance. On redistribution, have you come up with ideas about where you would take money from? When you operate with a fixed budget, giving money to one thing means taking money from somewhere else. Have you looked at that from the point of view of fair work? Where would you take it from?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
Obviously, I ask that without seeking to compromise you.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
That is absolutely understandable, because of all the changes at the UK Government level.
In terms of specific incentives, are you able to give any more flavour at a generic level of some of the themes or, again, is that all wrapped up under your future announcements?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
You can be sure that I will continue to ask about that.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
It might be picked up by other members, but it is also clearly an area of interest in relation to creating a future.
I will ask an open question about green free ports. What are you able to tell us about the current status and timelines?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
I will pick up on that point before I move on to my main questions. We all agree that the most recent fiscal event—which was, frankly, disastrous—will have an impact on existing supply chains, but it will surely also have an impact on the supply chains that the Scottish Government will be looking to develop through the likes of ScotWind. Are you concerned about that combined with rising costs, a potential inability through our labour policy to attract key skills that we might need, and the limitations on proper borrowing powers?
10:45Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
I think that my colleague, Maggie Chapman, is going to ask about investment zones.
I have a final question. There were concerns, which continue to rumble around, about the potential for tax avoidance by using free ports. I am looking at a University of Portsmouth report from last year in the Journal of Money Laundering Control, which it makes the case over that misuse. As we know, the UK loses £267 billion each year to money laundering and financial crime. Given that regulation of that area is entirely reserved to the UK Government, have you had any discussions with the UK Government about what steps it is going to take to make sure that free ports are not used for tax avoidance? That is a loss to ordinary people in the street, in terms of doctors, teachers, nurses and public money generally.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
On conditionality, I am optimistic that the businesses that trade out of whatever Scottish ports are allocated green free port status will have equitability at their core—in the context of entrepreneurship, I am thinking about women-led businesses and women business representation. Am I right to be optimistic about that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, everybody.
I want to focus on the matter at hand, which is the financial memorandum. There has been a lot of chattering external to this committee about the national care service, but personally, I will always welcome audacious and ambitious projects for change. That said, I have to recognise that what we have here is a large project that is complex to deliver and which has a longer-term outlook and a wide breadth of scope at a time when, as has been mentioned, we have rising inflation.
Minister, you said that “folks are saying that all that should be” covered in the financial memorandum—I think that you were referring to the extra items that the convener said were not mentioned. I do think that that is true, but my frustration has been that, despite the fact that the estimated costs in years 1 and 2 have about a 50 per cent variance and that there is over a 100 per cent variance in years 3, 4 and 5, everything has not been covered. I expected to see something in the FM that said, “We don’t know about the following areas, but we’re going through the process of discussing them. For example, we have talked about VAT,” but it is almost as if those areas do not exist.
That frustrates me because, ultimately, I want to have confidence that the FM represents the best picture that we have at that time, even if its estimates have a wide degree of variance, as is the case now. Knowing that, and having read everything in readiness for this meeting, what would you or your team do differently next time to reflect those concerns?
