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 1696 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
Catherine, did you say that the retail strategy is tied to the national 10-year economic strategy, and will there be a strand focused on retail?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
Do we have a timescale for the skills audit and action plan?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
I am going to make some progress now. Alexander Burnett is next, to be followed by John Mason.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
When we went to Midsteeple Quarter, the people there shared with us that they had had an issue with insurance, in that they had maybe not realised the significance of their insurance liability. There was a discussion about expert support for such projects that could be accessed centrally.
We will go on to questions from Jamie Halcro Johnston. However, you mentioned the town centre first principle. The committee has heard about difficulties that can exist in delivering it when there are out-of-town developments. We will all have, from our regions and constituencies, examples of there being a desire to invest in a town centre, but applications for out-of-town developments being granted and businesses in the town centre feeling that that will pull business away from them.
I think that it was in the session that we had with Leigh Sparks that we heard the suggestion that a moratorium on out-of-town developments be introduced, which would clearly prioritise town centre developments. Is that something that the Government is considering?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
John Mason is next.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
Last week, Michelle Thomson and I went to Burntisland, which has a thriving little High Street. Burntisland is next to Kirkcaldy, and we were told that businesses in Kirkcaldy want to move to Burntisland because it provides the advantages of smaller units and the small business bonus scheme. The committee has taken evidence from Love Oor Lang Toun, and we heard that Kirkcaldy has a lot of empty units, some of which are big, and that it is a challenging environment.
Part of the issue is the rates scheme. It is great for a place such as Burntisland, which has a small and thriving High Street with diverse businesses, but it is not supporting big town centres, where there are closures, mismatched units and high streets that are finding it difficult to recover, notwithstanding all the community effort that goes into that. You have talked about engaging on non-domestic rates. Is there a timescale attached to that, or does that need to be resolved?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
I cannot remember the name for it, but we have heard of situations in which the council will go in and carry out repairs to unsafe buildings. It is entitled to carry out such repairs, but it then finds it difficult to reclaim the funds, because the landlord is an absentee or because they are just not co-operating. We have heard that that could act as a disincentive to the council to take on a repair, even though the repair might be necessary. Has the Government considered that? I believe that the legislation to enable councils to do that was recently passed, but we have heard that it might not be working as effectively as it could be and that councils might be reluctant to get involved with dilapidated buildings, because of concerns that they might end up owning them or might not be able to recover their costs.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
The committee will now take evidence on the draft Registers of Scotland (Information and Access, etc) Miscellaneous Amendment Order 2022.
I welcome back to the meeting Tom Arthur, Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, who is joined by Megan Stefaniak, who is a lawyer with the Scottish Government, and Harry Murray, who is policy lead at Registers of Scotland. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
Good morning and welcome to the 16th meeting in 2022 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. I have received apologies from Gordon MacDonald MSP. John Mason MSP is attending as his committee substitute.
Our first item of business is the final evidence session on our town centres and retail inquiry. I welcome Tom Arthur MSP, the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth. From the Scottish Government, I welcome Catherine Brown, who is head of the retail and cities unit, and David Cowan, who is the head of the regeneration unit.
As always, I ask members and witnesses to keep their questions and answers as concise as possible. I also ask the minister to be as specific as possible in his answers and to avoid generalisations. The committee is at the stage of considering its recommendations and we want to them to be as relevant and constructive as possible.
I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Claire Baker
You mentioned a number of reports in your opening statement. The committee is aware that there are a number of strategies around town centres, at the moment. In the first session in the inquiry, we heard from Professor Leigh Sparks. Although I think that there is broad support for the direction of travel from the Government, there is some concern about the way in which the documents work together, whether they complement each other, and how effectively ministers and Government are working so that the strategies are delivered collectively. Will you say a bit about that? You mentioned the retail strategy, the response to town centres and the national planning framework. There is quite a lot going on, but is it working cohesively?
