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 1505 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Decision Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My app did not connect. I would have voted yes.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
The Scottish Government is committed to giving people the right to retrain. As I have indicated, some of the areas in which the Scottish Government is active on that—not least in terms of the £500 million being allocated for offshore wind—
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
I presume that the member also does not want to hear about the £500 million just transition fund.
The Scottish Government appreciates the stresses that the north-east economy has experienced because of the changing situation in the North Sea basin and the changes that our economy will face. We are committed to reskilling and providing opportunities to people to make that transition a just transition into the future.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
The Scottish Government continues to develop Scotland’s next climate change plan, which will provide strong and credible policy action to deliver emissions reductions. Those policies will be underpinned by our enduring commitment to a just transition to net zero and supported by the development of just transition plans for sites, sectors and regions to ensure a greener and fairer future for Scotland’s people. Pending the passage of legislation in the Parliament and the setting of carbon budgets, we expect the next climate change plan to be laid in draft in summer 2025.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
Audrey Nicoll is quite right. Needless to say, the real-terms cut of 9 per cent to Scotland’s capital budget has had an incredibly damaging effect on Scotland’s ability to provide essential funding to a number of important projects and programmes, including those in the net zero space. The Scottish Government and other devolved Governments depend on the UK Government coming to appreciate that fact if we are to drive forward meaningful and impactful net zero policy.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
The Government is considering carefully how remaining ScotWind funding can be deployed. We wish to minimise the use of ScotWind money and put moneys back in the future, as we did in 2023-24. There is a 10-year just transition plan of £500 million for the north-east, for instance, which indicates our commitment to the future.
We appreciate—as I hope Liam McArthur does—the position that Scotland has been put in by the UK Government. I know that he, and other members, would not wish to see more money come out of public services to try to cope with that eventuality. Scotland has no levers available mid-year to deal with the difficulties that are imposed on us by the UK Government, other than through the reduction of spending on public services or through making sensible use of such resources as the one that Liam McArthur mentioned.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
As our programme for government set out, the Scottish Government continues to take significant action to grow our renewables sector and to ensure a just transition. Through our just transition fund, we have already allocated £75 million to projects in the north-east and Moray, including £11 million for skills and retraining initiatives. We are investing up to £500 million over five years to anchor our offshore wind supply chain in Scotland. We are kick-starting that commitment with an investment of £67 million in the sector this financial year. Those investments form just part of the approach that we are setting out through our new “Green Industrial Strategy”, which was published yesterday, and the energy strategy and just transition plan, which we will publish shortly.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
Needless to say, all of that was nonsense. [Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
I say that because the United Kingdom Government itself has pointed to a black hole in its finances and has indicated that it intends to see things getting worse. [Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament
Retrofitting and Tenement Maintenance
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Alasdair Allan
I start by thanking members for their contributions in what has been a useful debate. In particular, I thank Mr Simpson for bringing the debate to the chamber. I also pay tribute to the organisations that were involved in producing the “Meeting Scotland’s Retrofit Challenge” report.
I very much look forward to meeting the representatives of the 14 bodies that collaborated on the report next week to hear directly from them on the challenges that we face, and to discuss their recommendations to ensure that the pace and scale of retrofit across Scotland match our net zero ambitions. I accept that that requires cross-portfolio working within Government.
I thank all those who are involved in the Scottish Parliament working group on tenement maintenance, including Graham Simpson, the convener of the group, for their continued work. One of the group’s key recommendations was to instruct the Scottish Law Commission to undertake a reform project on compulsory owners associations for tenement properties. We welcome the discussion paper that was published by the commission, and we look forward to receiving further recommendations from it next spring, as well as its draft bill.
On the issue of tenements, on which the debate has rightly focused, I will pick up on a point that Ben Macpherson made. The subject is important to him, given that pretty much his whole constituency consists of old tenements. I refer to the recommendation of a short-life working group, which I hope will lead to new ways of providing information to owners in tenement properties, on everything from communal heating to energy efficiency measures.
