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 2789 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
There are two things: the £44 million of capital being transferred
“from Major Public Transport Projects to Rail Infrastructure”
and the £15.5 million
“of capital budget being transferred ... to Rail Franchise”.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
What will the lack of demand mean for your net zero targets?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
It would be good to know, as it seems quite handy that uptake is not as it should be, which means that you can balance your budget.
Let me return to Ferguson Marine. I think that Daniel Johnson mentioned a total cost of £202.6 million to complete the work, and I think you said that that was from when the yard came into public ownership. Is that correct?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
Can you give us a breakdown for those two things?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
Was that for the former head of—I cannot remember what he was called now. Was it for the turnaround director? Is that what those costs are for?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
Why would we write that funding off?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
There were issues about how the Scottish Government was handing the money to local authorities, so it would be good to know what that write-off was.
My last question is about the additional £4 million for the census. Do you have any more details on how that came about?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
Okay. I would have thought that a chunk of the census funding must have come from the UK Government. Is it just that we have spent more than our share?
Meeting of the Parliament
Scotland’s Links with the Arctic
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
I am pleased to be taking part in this debate because, as someone who represents Aberdeen, I know that trade links to the Arctic, and to Norway especially, are vital. I have been to and enjoyed visiting Norway many times. It will be at the heart of my contribution.
Aberdeen is twinned with Stavanger. I had the pleasure of being in Stavanger on a number of occasions in my previous role working in the oil and gas industry. Aberdeen and Stavanger is a perfect twinning, with the economies of both areas having relied heavily first on fishing and latterly on oil and gas. That partnership and friendship remains strong. Stavanger even gifts Aberdeen a Christmas tree each year.
I was pleased to read the 2019 Scottish Government document “Arctic Connections”, which has already been discussed. It includes a section on oil and gas, which states:
“The industry supports a total of 110,000 jobs in Scotland when including direct, indirect and induced employment.”
It goes on to say:
“A strong domestic oil and gas industry can play a positive role in supporting the low carbon transition, in terms of transferable skills and infrastructure.”
Things were much better in 2019 before the Greens were in government. The SNP of old seemed to understand how important the oil and gas sector was to our economy and our transition. That now seems to be a distant memory for this anti-growth and anti-business devolved Government.
Another part of the document that caught my eye was on digital connectivity. The document states:
“The challenges of broadband deployment in the Arctic are akin to those encountered by Scottish remote communities. Like Scotland, Arctic states have established broadband speed and coverage goals to increase interconnectivity in sparsely populated areas.”
While the Scottish Government has made a complete mess of the reaching 100 per cent—R100—scheme and missed its goals, Norway has some of the best fixed and mobile speeds in the world, as we heard earlier. That shows that that is possible, and that is something that we should strive towards.
Another similarity between Scotland and Norway is the island communities. It seems that, while Norway is investing in low-carbon vessels, we are investing in Norway’s old diesel fleet. We should be looking closely at what Norway is doing and, if we are serious about meeting our climate change goals, looking to invest in electrifying our harbours is a must.
Fishing is another area in which we have common interests. We should be working closely with our Arctic partners to ensure that we fish in a sustainable way and to learn how to transform our seafood industry through increased automation.
In closing, I agree with the motion that we should be collaborating with our Arctic partners. I also agree that we should learn from them. We should learn from them how to protect our oil and gas industry, as it is a key part of our energy transition. We should learn from them how to run a ferry service that is reliable and greener and which helps to support our island communities. We should learn from them how to grow our fishing industry and invest in automation. We should learn from them how to roll out a decent broadband service. We should learn from them how to roll out world-leading telemedicine, so that our rural communities are not left behind. We should learn from them how to build a decent car-charging infrastructure. In fact, this precarious SNP-Green Government should learn from our Arctic neighbours how to run a country properly.
16:25Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Douglas Lumsden
The Scottish National Party has been in power for 16 years, and the people of the north-east are still having to put up with a second-class rail service. The new trains for the north-east are 40-year-old diesel 125 cast-offs. There is no chance of electrification to Aberdeen, of dualling at Usan, or of reducing journey times to the central belt by 20 minutes by 2026. The local chamber of commerce has said that that is vital to economic growth in the area. Does the minister agree that rail services to Aberdeen and the north-east are being neglected by the SNP Government?
