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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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
To be fair to Maxine Smedley, she explained what Boots was doing with Macmillan and others in relation to service provision.
David Lonsdale, can you future think about this, too? I know that people are focused on running their businesses and are under a lot of pressure, especially given that the cost of living crisis might affect people coming into their businesses. If we want our town centres to be places where people will spend time, is there anything that can be done with landlords to enable that to happen? Your membership may have little influence on that, but they have an interest. Is there something that we can do collectively to bring back vibrancy to our town centres, above the first floor? What is preventing your members from doing that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Unfortunately, many hospitality venues have said that they cannot open on certain days, because of a shortage of staff. That may be an opportunity to drive up wages, but there is a shortage of chefs or a shortage of labour and, obviously, we have had the impact of Brexit. Are you seeing any change, recently, post-Covid?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I am very conscious of the time. I am happy with what you have provided, Bryan, and will hand back to the convener.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
What about your members’ relationship with landlords? What is your overview of the pattern of activity of landlords of and investors in properties occupied by your retailers? They might have been sitting on properties for a long time, because they thought that they would sell for a higher price in the future, but that prospect has perhaps diminished more than ever. What are your members saying about that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Good morning, everyone. I, too, am interested in buildings and their use. When we were in Dumfries, we were very struck by the fact that it is a large town, but there are vacancies across the second and third floors of all the retail premises, whether or not they are filled. If we want people to live and work in town centres so that they get a great experience as customers on the doorstep, how can we tackle vacancies above the first floor?
I will go to Maxine Smedley first. What has been the experience of Boots stores? What is done with the properties in our towns that have second or third floors? Just-in-time supply means that properties that have previously been used for storage do not need to be used for that. What is preventing you from helping or enabling those properties to be put to residential use? It might now be in your interest for those to be used if you want people to live in town centres.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
The sheer scale and speed of the energy price crisis are overwhelming our constituents and the concern is that waiting until October, when there might be a second rise in the price cap, will be too late. The Scottish and UK Governments have already provided policy funding and support. What support do you think should be put in place immediately? What policy and funding changes are required?
Moreover, do you think that, whether it be the Scottish Government, the UK Government or, indeed, parliamentarians, we collectively are treating this as the crisis that it most obviously is? For policy advice, I will ask Chris Birt to respond first.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
My second set of questions relates to wider energy markets and the post-Brexit UK energy market. I should emphasise that energy markets are reserved to the UK Government although, post-Brexit, they remain closely aligned with the European Union energy markets. I put my questions first to Dan Alchin and then Keith Anderson. Can domestic energy market reform happen without wider EU reform? What do you think the EU is likely to do in relation to energy market reform? Will that be accelerated by other resilience issues, such as the security issues in relying on Russian gas and the need for the EU to rapidly embrace renewables? What is your insight on reform and the security of renewables from European countries, including the potential for Scotland to help to provide that impetus?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Can Keith Anderson answer that question, particularly in relation to Scotland’s energy supply?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I come to Alastair Wilcox.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I put the question to Ross Dornan. What does he think about decoupling gas from electricity in the market? How soon can that be done? Does that process need to be accelerated?
