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
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
Iain Bomphray introduced the idea of thinking about how we marry procurement with other things. Obviously we would be undercut if we were the only country in the world that took such an approach, but could we lead by example and help to drive innovation while also helping to build resilience in the supply chain? We are interested in construction in particular, but that could apply to other areas.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
Obviously, you are trying to get the private sector to see the market opportunity in that.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
Nick Shields wants to come back in before I hand back to the convener. Colin Beattie has been very patient.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
Thank you, Nick.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
I will come to Keith Ridgway. I know that the work of the NMIS has been driven a lot by the low carbon and digital agenda, initially in the aerospace sector. Can that thinking be applied to resilience elsewhere, in particular in the construction sector?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
Good morning, everyone. It is good to see you all. I am particularly interested in how we can marry the sustainability and resilience of domestic supply chains with the net zero goal. Much of what is imported comes from the far east, particularly in the construction sector, as we heard last week.
Getting back to the basics about construction helping with our recovery, we know that cement presents a global challenge. We discussed last week whether there is an opportunity to investigate the replacement of cement with next-generation materials and innovation. At the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee just yesterday, we heard about the potential in Scotland for carbon capture and storage to address some of the cement issues. If we do not address cement, we will not be able to address some of the net zero challenges, globally or domestically.
I am not sure whether cement is your area, but perhaps you can comment on how we marry the need to address supply-chain interruptions in key sectors by looking at how we do things domestically with the desire to become global innovators in moving towards net zero and the world that we need. How realistic would that be if we put our minds to it?
I will come to Nick Shields first, and then to the others. If cement in particular is not your thing, you can comment on the general concept in relation to the carbon miles issue. Is there a policy intervention—through procurement, for example—that could help the domestic economic innovation agenda?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
Mike Tholen, do you want to comment briefly on that?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
So it is a long game—
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
I come to Alan James. As we have just heard, the storage capability of Scotland is enormous, if not unique. Is it somewhat peculiar that the phase 1 criteria that was used by BEIS in its assessments did not involve the storage capability of Scotland for carbon capture and storage? Should that be revisited? Mike Tholen, you might want to come back in on that, but the question was specifically for Alan James.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Fiona Hyslop
I come to Professor Haszeldine. In your submission, you were direct about the disadvantages to the Acorn project of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy criteria. If we have to move ahead as quickly as possible on carbon capture and storage projects, how will those criteria advantage some sites but disadvantage the Acorn site? Is the issue the focus on the volume of CO2, or is it that the combination of different sites adds to the volume? The point about connection to emitters is at the crux of why it did not go ahead in phase 1, but what is needed to make sure that it definitely goes ahead in phase 2?
