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 1652 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
I will give way one more time if I have a moment.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
I simply do not accept Miles Briggs’s suggestion that the lowest-income families in this country own cars. The lowest-income families are mostly excluded from car ownership and we should support public transport, as the Government is doing, with more powers for municipal buses; serious investment in rail and public ownership of ScotRail; and free bus travel for under-22s adding to the existing free bus schemes, so that almost 50 per cent of the population will have free use of buses in Scotland, which in itself will make more routes viable. There is also the fair fares review and so on.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
Were those parties taking Scotland in the right direction then? As in so many other issues, on climate change—
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
—they will the end but not the means.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
If the member wants an intervention, it is very clear that most of the people at the lower end of the income scale rely on public transport and on active transport. If we are concerned about transport justice, they are the people we should be supporting.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
We are also committed to a 20 per cent reduction in car use. In conclusion, I say to Richard Leonard that that is taking Scotland in the right direction. Scotland used to have road traffic reduction targets, but the Labour-Lib Dem coalition scrapped them.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Cost of Living
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
We have a great deal more to come. As well as the introduction of free bus travel for under-22s, which has only just come in and which will protect routes in rural areas that are vulnerable to cuts by private market operators, we will be implementing the fair fares review, to look at rebalancing the cost of getting about.
We will be introducing rent controls, as well as protection against evictions during the costly winter months. We are committed to the progressive taxation system that we have in Scotland, in contrast with calls from Conservative colleagues—which were made again only yesterday—for tax cuts for higher earners.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Cost of Living
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
I understand that those who instinctively like low-tax policies sometimes have to make an effort to come to terms with the need for such a rise. Why were the Conservatives able to come to terms with the need for an NI hike, which will be regressive, but were not able to come to terms with the need for more progressive income tax, which we have already implemented in Scotland—the five-band system that places the expectation on those with the broadest shoulders?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Cost of Living
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
I have spoken to many workers in the north-east of Scotland who recognise that fossil fuels are not the future of their communities, our economy or our planet, and they want a Government that will invest in the just transition, which is what we are doing.
If we are going to achieve the reduction in people’s energy costs, energy efficiency, demand reduction and zero-emissions heating have to be part of it.
The issue is about far more than energy. We have the Scottish child payment, which was introduced, then expanded, then doubled, in contrast to the UK cut to universal credit. We have invested in free school meals; in tuition for higher education, so as to not burden young people with the cost; in free prescriptions; in other measures to cut the costs of the school day; and in increased funded childcare. Council tax is lower in Scotland than it is elsewhere in the UK, and we have a council tax reduction scheme. We spend significant amounts of money from the Scottish Government budget to mitigate the deeply harmful impact of UK social security policies.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Cost of Living
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Patrick Harvie
There is also a great deal that we need the UK Government to do. We have a clear focus on taking every action that we can with devolved powers. The just transition away from fossil fuels has to be critical in achieving that. This Government is committed to taking that action with every lever that we have at our disposal.
