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 846 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
I need to come to officials on that matter.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
I will write to the member on the matter.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
Sorry—I will write to the committee.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
There is certainly on-going dialogue. I myself have had dialogue with the UK Government about the deposit return scheme, wet wipes, single-use vapes and other matters. I come to officials for the dialogue that has been happening at official level.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
There is nothing in the bill that says that they must be the same.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
I absolutely agree with the member on that. The issue has been highlighted—George Monbiot wrote an essay for The Guardian in which he described how he got his fish a waste-handling licence. That is how easy it is to get a licence, at least down in England.
Here in Scotland, the Resource Management Association Scotland has raised with me the issue of wanting to create a higher bar for waste carriers. We are absolutely looking at that issue, under something called the integrated authorisation framework—have I got that right?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
We do not need to make legal provision for that in the bill, but work is under way on the issue because it is—as you rightly highlight—something that we need to do.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
That is an interesting question. In the consultation, we consulted on charging for waste collection, but we have not brought that forward in the bill.
You make a good point about the standardisation of charging and what it would look like to incentivise and support people to do the right thing. We will now need to take that forward with local authorities through the code of practice. We do not intend to impose that on local authorities through the bill; I would like to develop it with them through the code of practice.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
Do you mean the support measures?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
No, there is no staging approach to implementation as the householders’ duty of care already exists. Issuing a fixed-penalty notice of £200 pounds is absolutely intended to be, as Janet McVea said, a last resort when there is no basis for supposing that the householder made an attempt to meet their duty of care. The measure is to tackle persistent and repeat offenders.
On other work that I am doing in this space, I have met Gumtree—twice, I think—to talk about how the company can support its users and customers to do the right thing. One of the things that we have suggested to Gumtree, which I believe that it intends to implement—this is not something that we are legally obliging it to do—is that people who advertise white-van-man waste services should post their waste management licence. That would enable the householder to complete their duty of care, because they could point to having seen a waste management licence number.
That is an example of measures that we can help online platforms and other services to put in place, so that the householder can say that they have met their duty of care.
