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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1649 contributions
|
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
Meaningful consultation of local authorities, communities and members of the public is key to the determination process for renewable energy developments above 50MW. Developers are instructed to follow our good practice guidance on pre-application consultation involving communities, as that is the best stage for communities to help to shape a development before an application is submitted.
The Scottish Government is committed to further strengthening the engagement process for communities by making pre-application consultations a statutory requirement, as part of the United Kingdom Government’s proposed reforms to electricity infrastructure consenting in Scotland.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
Scottish Government officials have been working—I should say that they have been working positively—with their UK Government counterparts on proposed reforms to the Electricity Act 1989 since February 2024, which is before the current Administration took office.
We helped to inform the content of the UK Government’s consultation, which was published in October last year. One of the most important proposals is that we give local communities a stronger voice in the consenting process. For the first time, a pre-application consultation would be statutory, thereby guaranteeing that communities can express their views early in the process to help to shape developments.
Ultimately, the legislation is reserved, so we must wait to see how the proposals are managed through the Westminster parliamentary process.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
A schoolboy error, Presiding Officer.
The Government’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2045 is absolutely unwavering. We are continuing to develop and take forward climate policies ahead of the Climate Change Committee’s advice on new carbon budget levels, which is due this May. Once we have received that advice, we will bring forward the carbon emission targets via secondary legislation, which will set a deliverable course towards net zero, with the aim of publishing a draft climate change plan to achieve those targets in the autumn.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
The Government’s commitment—[Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
The report will be published in due course. However, the member will be aware that the two Governments have been working closely together to strain every sinew to ensure that, in both the long term and the immediate term, intervention is there to support the workforce and businesses at Grangemouth. Hydrogen is part of that. Decisions about carbon capture that are taken at the UK level and the work that we are doing in the Grangemouth community are also clearly part of that.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
Mercedes Villalba has raised interesting and important points on those issues. One of the things that the Scottish Government is seeking to do is to open a conversation with the UK Government about mandating community benefits. That is a reserved issue, but I hope that we can have a fruitful conversation on it. The Scottish Government is supportive of all communities that seek, in various ways, to ensure that they get community benefit from projects in their areas.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
It is true to say that the establishment of a robust regulatory framework is key to the deployment of hydrogen as an important part of our future energy mix. With that in mind, we continue to urge the UK Government to accelerate its consideration of the regulations that are required to enable the development of hydrogen infrastructure and the establishment of business models that would support hydrogen transport and storage, in order to provide clarity and confidence to developers who are investing in driving forward hydrogen production projects in Scotland.
I would also urge the UK Government to set out the timeframe for an accelerated decision on hydrogen blending in the gas grid.
Meeting of the Parliament
Scotland’s Renewable Future
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
The member mentioned that the idea that it might take a while to build nuclear power stations in Scotland to address our energy needs is simply propaganda. How long does he think that it might take?
Meeting of the Parliament
Scotland’s Renewable Future
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
I thank members for, in many cases, their insightful contributions to this important debate. However, among the advocates of nuclear power, there was a notable shyness about volunteering communities in their own constituencies that would host not only—
Meeting of the Parliament
Scotland’s Renewable Future
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Alasdair Allan
Zonal pricing has to be done in a way that is right and fair. It was interesting that some of the contributions towards the end of the debate acknowledged the unfair nature of the status quo when it comes to transmission charges and many related issues, and we are having that conversation with the UK Government.
If I heard him rightly—forgive me if I did not—Paul Sweeney asked a question about small modular reactors at Grangemouth. I understand that, in 2022, Ineos confirmed that such reactors did not form part of its net zero road map for Grangemouth.
As I said, I cannot refer to everyone who spoke in the debate. However, as the cabinet secretary made clear, the Scottish Government unapologetically rejects new nuclear power plants in Scotland because of the risks and costs related to their development—
