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 1176 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
Willie Coffey is absolutely right on the issue of public awareness. The public engagement strategy for Scotland will be led by the new heat and energy efficiency Scotland agency.
It is also vital that the UK Government publishes firm plans to rebalance fuel prices. That is necessary to ensure that climate-friendly heating systems are cheaper to run than fossil fuel systems. We are pressing the UK Government for more urgent action to enable delivery in Scotland, to address market disincentives to switching to zero-emission heat, and to accelerate decision making on the potential role of hydrogen. We have clear ambitions to decarbonise buildings faster and we offer significantly more support for heat pumps and other zero-emission heating systems than other parts of the UK, but we cannot afford to delay taking action and the UK Government needs to match that ambition.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
I and a number of other ministers have visited that particular company and been impressed by its work. I am pleased to hear that there is cross-party support for that and recognition of the important role that heat storage and electrical storage will play in the future of a decarbonised and renewable energy grid. Martin Whitfield is quite right that it will also have an important role to play in the jobs benefit that will come from the decarbonisation of heat. We believe that many thousands of jobs and high-quality careers are to be had from that programme of work, which will benefit communities the length and breadth of the country.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
This is another hugely important aspect of the agenda. The Parliament passed the Heat Networks (Scotland) Act 2021 in the previous parliamentary session, and we are implementing that legislation. Public bodies are under a new duty to assess whether their estate would be suitable to connect to district heating systems, and local authorities have powers to identify areas that are suited to district heating. We are exploring the potential for further legislation to strongly encourage buildings to connect to heat networks. Meanwhile, district heating projects in Scotland can receive pre-development support from our Heat Network Support Unit and grant and loan funding from Scotland’s £300 million heat network fund or our district heating loan fund.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
We have a high-level estimate of the total cost of decarbonising heating in Scotland. It is clear that that cannot be met from public funds alone. We want to make sure that it is affordable for householders, communities and business and that will include using a blend of public support, as well as financial products, with a role for private investment and the energy industry, too. More detail will be set out as we move forward to consult on the heat in buildings strategy later this year.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
I am not entirely sure what Edward Mountain is referring to as “the public housing stock” and whether he is talking about council housing or social housing. We have a substantial social housing net zero heat fund, which he is aware of. We work with local authorities as well as housing associations and other social housing providers. In fact, this is part of the wider heat in buildings programme, and the overall high-level costs that I referred to earlier have been published and put into the public domain.
Meeting of the Parliament
Programme for Government 2023-24
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
Programme for Government 2023-24
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
It is clear that the Government is already doing far more than Governments in other parts of the UK on the financial support that people need to retrofit their homes. Will the member commit her party to supporting us and working with us on a heat in buildings bill, or does she share her party leader’s attachment to the rhetoric on green extremism?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Patrick Harvie
Having 20mph speed limits in cities, towns and villages—particularly in places where vulnerable road users and vehicles mix—is internationally recognised as a key element in reducing road casualties and creating safe conditions for people to walk, wheel and cycle.
The multipartner task group, which includes members of the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, as well as various active travel and sustainable travel partners, agreed that the wider policy objectives should be considered alongside road assessments being conducted.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Patrick Harvie
The Scottish Government is committed to developing a national strategy for 20mph speed limits, which supports commitments in the 2021 Bute house agreement and the 2022 programme for government.
We welcome Highland Council’s enthusiasm as an early adopter of the strategy and we want to see more areas of Scotland benefiting. In addition to the £1.4 million that was allocated to road authorities in the most recent financial year to help them to identify the number of roads affected and to assess the financial implications, we will also be providing funding to all road authorities to fully implement 20mph speed limits by 2025.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Patrick Harvie
I would certainly be happy to discuss that with the new transport minister once they are in post. For chargers on the ChargePlace Scotland network, the helpdesk initially tries to remedy faults remotely where that is possible. If the fault cannot be fixed remotely, a fault ticket is sent to the charge point owner and their chosen contractor to make them aware of an issue, and engineers should be on site within 48 hours of receipt of the fault ticket.
I recognise that there will be concerns around the country, in particular in remote and rural areas, where there may be additional challenges, but we think that across the country as whole, the level of reliability of the network is high.
