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
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
Murdo Fraser also has questions about energy security.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
But we are not moving at a fast enough pace for that to be in place by spring 2025. There will be a period when we will still—
11:45Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
I have one other question before I bring in Gordon MacDonald. What incentives does the green freeport offer as a result of closing down the refinery and moving to an import and export business? It looks as though the green freeport is costing rather than creating jobs, because we are looking at losing 400 jobs at Ineos. What factor does the green freeport play in the decision, given that it will be offering tax breaks?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
Why did the newspapers report the closure as spring 2025? Where did that come from if it was not part of the announcement?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
I do not know whether you can share this with us, but when was the decision made? The meeting with the workers took place on 21 November, but we had our just transition for the Grangemouth area inquiry in the summer. There could have been some recognition of the need for the plant to move towards net zero and that, as a result, plans such as these were being discussed, but not on a timescale that has been presented to us. The workers found out on 21 November, so when was the decision made?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
Thank you. I was going to see whether Colin Smyth had any questions about the workforce, but I will go back to the issue of the board. When we conducted our inquiry in the summer, we expressed some frustration around the Grangemouth future industry board, which was not able to give us evidence because it did not constitute itself as a board. It is really a discussion forum. Recently, Richard Dixon has written an article expressing frustration about the lack of activity by the board. I understand that the last minutes that were made public were from December 2022. Although the board may have met, I do not know how transparent it is.
I do not know whether you have an idea of when the board’s priorities will be available. They are not available for 2023-24, yet we are almost at the end of 2023 and we are faced with news that we were not expecting from Grangemouth. The committee would want to look for some assurances that the board is working effectively and is filling the gap with planning the transition. The other issue is that we are still waiting for the Government’s plan.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
Is there a recognition that the recent announcement on Grangemouth impacts on the just transition plan significantly, because we have moved at a pace that was not anticipated when the plan was originally drafted?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
On the green freeport, from the outside it looks as though there is a connection between the fact that the refinery business is now moving to an import-export business and, at the same time, a green freeport is being set up that will give tax breaks and incentives to imports and exports. However, we have been told that there is no connection between the two.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
On importing, I asked the previous panel about offsetting. The carbon activity is just being moved somewhere else—we are offshoring it—but it still has to happen. We will be importing refined products. Do you plan to carry out an assessment of where the refined products come from and how they are being refined? Other countries do not have the same health and safety conditions for workers as we do and they will not be refining to the same standards. How will we know that the imports are of the same quality as those that we produce in Scotland?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Petroineos Grangemouth
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Claire Baker
A number of members have asked about energy security. No doubt, we will pick that up with the UK Government minister when they are here in January but, at a time of increased global instability, it does not seem like good long-term planning for us to be increasingly reliant on imports.
