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 2620 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
Have you made a risk assessment of the potential damage to our universities?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
Let us move on to a slightly different subject. Two months ago, the University of Glasgow put out a statement that led to the headline:
“Top university tells students to drop out if they can’t find themselves somewhere to live”.
Will the change make that situation better or worse for the coming year?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
However, nothing from the views that were submitted has changed your mind, so if I represented one of the organisations that submitted views, I would be asking myself, “Why bother?”
Meeting of the Parliament
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
Fergus Ewing mentioned the A96 between Inverness and Nairn. Can the minister commit that the A96 will be fully dualled between Inverness and Aberdeen?
Meeting of the Parliament
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
I will reflect on that; let us see what comes forward in the future.
Another issue that I want to raise—and it has been raised time and again during the debate—is the capacity of councils to deliver the changes and the policy. When I looked at this as a council leader at COSLA, we asked over and over whether extra resource would be available, but we have seen cuts to local government in successive budgets. Colleagues such as Alexander Stewart pointed out that that will be an issue with the framework. The SNP-Green devolved Government continually pushes more burdens on to local government by removing its funding and capacity to deliver. In the words of a COSLA resource spokesperson, council services are “at absolute breaking point”.
Today, we have heard concerns from Fergus Ewing about the impact that this policy will have on farming and rural communities. It lets them down and it lets down our towns and cities and our Government partners. I look forward to seeing how this will progress in future, as it will need to improve.
16:50Meeting of the Parliament
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
As I said, I welcome that, but surely we should not be in a situation where many organisations feel that a ban is coming. I hope that the minister can clear that up.
I agree that we should have a town centre-first approach, but I am concerned that the framework will make it hard for businesses such as garden centres that need to be out of town to be granted permission. Time will tell on the interpretation, but I would have liked to see guidance issued on what out-of-town development will be permitted.
Meeting of the Parliament
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
I thank all members for an interesting debate. I also thank the organisations that emailed helpful briefings to all members over the past couple of weeks.
I congratulate the minister on two things. First, it is obvious that he listened to concerns about the previous draft and came back with an improved version. The revised draft is better, but it still falls short in key areas, as we heard from previous speakers. Secondly, I congratulate him on his foreword to NPF4, where he admits that planning is “fully devolved” but says that everything would be better if we were independent, thereby showing, in black and white, that this SNP-Green devolved Government will take any topic and try to turn it into an independence debate.
Emma Harper rose—
Meeting of the Parliament
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
The member raises a very good point. I hope that we will find out more when the minister responds.
As Fergus Ewing once said, we should be anti-emission, not anti-car. I welcome the fact that the minister said that his Government is committed to fully dualling the A9 and A96. I remind him that the commitment was to fully dual by 2030. Like Fergus Ewing, I will remind the minister and his colleagues about that commitment. I note that The Press and Journal is reporting today that the free ports will be in the Forth and in Cromarty, so the A96 dualling will be vital for the north-east.
One place we will not need a road to is drive-throughs, because it seems that the devolved Government wants to ban drive-throughs. Once again, the junior partner in this coalition of chaos is pulling the strings. The ban seemed to come from left field, with no opportunity for the affected businesses to give comment, because the policy had never appeared before.
Meeting of the Parliament
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
No, I will not.
The minister may not like drive-throughs, but they bring jobs, pay rates, bring investment and provide a service, so the policy is just plain wrong. I welcome the minister’s earlier comment about a potential U-turn, but we should not be in this situation.
Meeting of the Parliament
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Douglas Lumsden
I do not have time; I am sorry.
Another area of concern is housing. I have been a member for 20 months now, and housing is a topic that comes up time and again. We have a housing crisis, but this Government continually misses its housing targets. We need to build good-quality, affordable and energy-efficient homes, and we need to build them faster, but to do that we need land to build on. I do not see enough in the framework to solve our housing crisis.
As Miles Briggs told us, there are 28,000 homeless households, and Mark Griffin said that the actual number could be a lot higher. Miles Briggs also pointed out that land that is earmarked for housing is occupied by car dealerships and the like. Where will those businesses be sent?
Willie Rennie and Emma Harper mentioned brownfield site issues. It is not easy to develop on those sites, and it is expensive. What incentives or, as was also pointed out, penalties may be put in place to encourage those developments?
