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 576 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
And for young European people coming to Scotland?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
The only point to add is that the argument has a stronger bite, if you like, in relation to a youth mobility scheme because if somebody is accessing a visa to come for their career, they are expecting to earn money while they are here, whereas somebody accessing a youth mobility scheme is likely to be somebody who does not have the resources. To achieve its objectives, a youth mobility scheme should be open and accessible to the maximum number of young people, not only to those who can come up with the cash.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
Thank you.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
I want to move on to another topic before we finish. Earlier in the second half of this inquiry, before we got deep into the youth mobility issues, we heard some evidence about energy issues. Could you reflect on that and, in particular, on the emissions trading scheme? It is an area where there is some co-decision-making, because the ETS is not wholly reserved—the Scottish Government is represented on an authority that makes some decisions.
We heard some evidence suggesting that, unless there is alignment between the UK ETS and the EU ETS, there will be an impact, from January next year, on businesses trading in and out of the EU. What is the Scottish Government’s position on that, and what is the status of that work? Also, is there a concern that, if a trade agreement was reached with a far-right US regime that promoted climate denial conspiracy theories, which would clearly not be likely to include a carbon price in products entering the UK market, there could be harmful impacts from that?
11:00Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
If I can move on to a practical example—
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
I am asking not whether you know what the UK Government really wants yet, but whether, as the UK Government determines what it wants, something akin to a co-decision-making process between the Governments of the UK is emerging. Are you in the position of lobbying someone else who will make the decision, or is there a process of deciding together what our shared priorities are?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
Is there an informal approach that seeks to achieve that, or is the process fundamentally unchanged?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
Thank you.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
The point about hydrogen infrastructure is certainly relevant, although it is perhaps outwith the scope of this inquiry. If the cabinet secretary could give us in writing any further update on the status of the work on ETS alignment, that would be helpful.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 13 March 2025
Patrick Harvie
Good morning. It has been suggested that, particularly from the US perspective, the EU’s approach to regulation is too restrictive. There is nothing new or unique to AI in that dynamic. For many years, there has been a tendency in the US to emphasise economic opportunities from innovation, even if they involve, for example, more release of toxic chemicals, more rat faeces in the food chain—as one of the regulations that has just been ripped up allows—or other forms of social and environmental harm. In the European context, the tendency is to emphasise the benefits that regulation is intended to achieve. Therefore there is nothing fundamentally new or specific to AI in that dynamic.
I wonder whether you could unpack this quote from the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s written submission to the committee:
“the UK could choose to bring the two approaches together to maximise the opportunity whilst ensuring there are effective regulations”.
It seems to me that those approaches are opposites, so we will have to pick one. Any effective regulation that achieves a social or environmental benefit or a public protection will, to some extent, constrain economic opportunities. For example, I could aim to maximise the amount of ice cream that I eat while ensuring that I do not get fat, but that will not work. Surely, we will have to pick one.
