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
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Is the Scottish Government looking to other international developments in finalising the biodiversity strategy? Are there implications arising from the recently agreed UN high seas treaty? If Màiri McAllan is the lead minister on marine issues, how is she influencing the biodiversity strategy? How is the development of the European Union’s nature restoration law being factored into the final version of the strategy or into the version that will go out for consultation with the delivery plan?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Is that Màiri McAllan’s area of responsibility, or is it yours?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Scotland has vast rural and island areas and it has small convenience stores in villages and small towns. There is also concern about whether such communities will have return points. I understand that registration is an iterative process and that there are logistical considerations, not least for Biffa on collection. People might fear that collections will be few and far between.
What assurances can you give? Is that a matter for Circularity Scotland, or can you, as a minister, make it clear that you want the scheme to work for all parts of Scotland—not just for urban areas but for semi-rural, island and remote communities?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
I want to ask about the March gateway review. Is that taking place currently? Who is conducting it?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Who does the gateway review?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
The first time that natural capital was included in an economic recovery plan, it was not the national strategy for economic transformation, but the Covid economic recovery plan, which was published almost three years ago in 2020. I am interested in the action that has been taken in those—dare I say it—two and a half years rather than what has happened in the national strategy for economic transformation.
Moving on, we have talked about the more obvious areas with regard to mainstreaming. As we know, most Government agencies and departments understand the need to embed net zero, as that is one of the crises that we are seeking to address, but what about biodiversity, which is the other crisis that we are dealing with? Have you compared the extent to which it and net zero have been embedded as mainstream activities in other agencies? Do you have forums for bringing together public agencies to discuss what they are doing to tackle nature loss and biodiversity? How does this work in the not-so-obvious areas?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Finally, is there some forum in which you bring all ministers together to discuss biodiversity, nature loss and so on? Has that happened at any point?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
The UN treaty covers the 30 by 30 pledge for both land and sea. My understanding is that Scotland already has 37 per cent of its marine area covered. The sensitivity of ensuring that we live with local economies while addressing marine protection—certainly in inshore areas—is therefore of particular concern, and we know of, for example, Western Isles Council’s concerns on the proposed HMPAs.
I am not expecting you to deal with that today, as that topic is for another minister, but we should register the point that marine spatial planning must be very sensitive and sensible. We would be looking for a commonsense view to be taken. That will be a key aspect of what we will be looking for in the biodiversity strategy. There must be a balance and a sharing of responsibility, so that what we heard must apply to the land must apply very much to the sea, too. Is that an approach that you would welcome?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
We should probably pursue the issue of practicalities in rural areas with Circularity Scotland.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Fiona Hyslop
There has previously been criticism that there has been no international input into such reviews. My understanding, which is from Government gateway reviews, is that that would not be normal in any case and that any international research or comparisons would have happened at the very start of development of the legislation and the regulations. Is that correct?
