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 2760 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
What percentage of capital expenditure is that?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
Perhaps I could pick up where we just left off, with the proposal for a deficit fund. How we would fund that seems to be absolutely critical.
I turn to Ross Dornan from the oil and gas sector. Does the oil and gas sector recognise that it could have a role in supporting vulnerable consumers directly? I point to the fact that, over the past five years, the sector has not paid tax on its North Sea operations—BP specifically has not paid any tax in the North Sea. I think that it was in February this year that BP’s chief financial officer said:
“It’s possible that we’re getting more cash than we know what to do with.”
Surely paying more tax and enabling the Treasury to put money into a deficit fund would be one way to do that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
BP paid a negative tax of 54 per cent in 2019.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
Do other members of the panel have any further reflections on that or examples to give?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
There have been some examples in England where, under the Ukraine family scheme, extended family members have been brought over. There have then been some difficulties in relation to securing appropriate accommodation and some of those people have gone on to present as homeless. Has that happened in Scotland? Do you foresee that happening or will the structures that are being put in place here mitigate against anything like that happening?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
I hope that that will come through in the next week, because we are running up to the end of the month. I have one extra question about undocumented Ukrainian citizens who were here before 1 January 2022. They are a bit caught, because they are not part of any of the current schemes that have been announced to enable people to have extended visas here.
Is that a problem? Are there significant numbers of people involved? Do you know how many people are here and are undocumented—and are therefore ineligible for the schemes? Do you have any concerns around that and about how people could potentially be affected by the Rwandan scheme or any other scheme?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
Yes—if we could get a COSLA perspective, that would be good, too.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
Do any other panellists want to contribute on either of those questions?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
I will ask Elaine Ritchie a specific question. I recently met Stewarts of Tayside, which employs a lot of Ukrainian workers, sometimes on a seasonal basis and sometimes on a longer-term basis. The concern that it and some of its workers had is that although there is an assurance that the temporary visas can be extended to December 2022, the paperwork for their formal extension has not yet come through. Is that something that you are aware of, particularly in the rural context where there are a lot of Ukrainian seasonal workers in Perth and Kinross? Are you urging the Home Office to make sure that people are getting the necessary documents so that they have the assurance that they need that they can stay?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
End Greyhound Racing in Scotland (PE1758)
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Mark Ruskell
I think that it would be a service for the Government to get evidence for a parliamentary committee that is doing a deep dive into the issues and unpacking them, and that that would inform the Government’s view. I come back to the point that there are inherent risks in dogs running around a track at 40mph, such as a high risk of collision. In that situation it is very difficult—if not impossible—to protect animals from “suffering” and “injury” as the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 requires. The petitioners might have thoughts on how some of the enforcement issues have been very difficult for the SSPCA and others to follow up on in relation to the strict legal provisions in the 2006 act and the issues around doping and clear-cut abuses of animal welfare.
