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 1524 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Bearing in mind the recent energy price spikes, is there a case for wholesale energy market reform? You have said that gas is the marginal generation technology and sets the price. What options are there? What major changes are needed? Obviously, as the regulator, you need the UK Government to instruct you as to what the changes will be, but what would you like them to be and what do you expect them to be? Bearing in mind the immediate issues that we face, do you envisage any steps being taken in the Queen’s speech today to enable changes to happen?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
What about a legal obligation to replace a pre-payment meter?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
In an energy price crisis, the balance might need to shift from the companies to the consumers. I will leave it there. I think that you said that you will get back to me.
Neil Kenward, as Brexit proceeds, the Great Britain and European Union energy markets remain closely aligned. I do not know whether you heard President Macron’s speech. He is looking at the potential for wider alignment of non-EU European countries, particularly on defence and energy. We heard from Scottish Power and other suppliers that sufficient domestic energy market reform to deliver what you have talked about could take place without the need for wider EU reform—although I suspect that there will be wider reform of GB and EU energy markets. What opportunities and challenges are there in the short term and, strategically, in future?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Do you acknowledge that National Grid’s plans still penalise Scotland, and that we have people living in fuel poverty in the part of the United Kingdom that generates the most energy, in terms of both renewable energy and oil and gas? Is that not wrong?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Maybe—
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I am sorry, convener, but I just want to say that there does not seem to be a sense of urgency. During the Covid pandemic, we saw whole-system changes because of a world emergency. I get a sense that the approach is to wait and see, and it might take some years.
What is Ofgem, as the regulator, trying to do to increase the pace, scale and impact of the changes and reforms?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
We have heard some very interesting insights, some of which are contradictory, which is fascinating. Dr Mowforth, I am not sure whether attacking politicians for talking about e-commerce in a committee that is looking at e-commerce is necessarily—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Before the pandemic, the Scottish Tourism Alliance worked to try and stimulate demand and get tourism businesses to embrace e-commerce. It did that using what was almost a roadshow that was done in different towns.
We are looking at town centres, and there are different models. How do we get the curation that Carolyn spoke about? I can see how it would work for women. I do not know whether the Scottish Chambers of Commerce or a chamber of e-commerce could do it. How can we help the retailers in our town centres to do that? What would that model look like and who would deliver it? The whole point of the digital boost was to provide grants to get practitioners to help. It was commercial. How should that be delivered, and what is the role—if they have one—of agencies apart from to deliver funding?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I am conscious of the time. I think that the VAT registration requirement for digital boost funding was meant to stop the massive fraud that we have seen with pandemic funds in other places. However, that needs to be looked at. There is something in what Stuart Mackinnon said about how we develop it into a better product.
With regard to curation, women are 52 per cent of the population but are underrepresented in business in Scotland. I listened to what Gillian Crawford said about the need to localise. Packages exist and are free; we want the practitioners. Who does the curation and how do we do it?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I am conscious that the convener might cut us off, but those are really rich ideas.
