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
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
So we should slow down.
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
No, I do not—[Interruption.] Mr Lumsden is laughing away. His party cheer most of Mr Ewing’s announcements to the rafters, which is one of the reasons why I take them with a pinch of salt.
The Prime Minister’s announcement last week signalled a clear intention to choose the latter scenario, in which short-termism is the order of the day. It took some gall for the Prime Minister to stand behind a podium with the slogan
“Long-term Decisions for a Brighter Future”
while reading a speech that amounted to a betrayal of current and future generations.
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
I am grateful to Colin Smyth for giving way, and I take very seriously the challenge that he has made. I am in this job so that I can contribute to a climate plan that is capable of getting us back. However, I hope that Colin Smith will recognise that, on the last target, the gap was the smallest it has been since 2011. We have been closing the gap and catching up to where we should be. We need to continue to do that, but the announcement last week will make our job 10 times harder.
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
It certainly does that—Mr Swinney makes that point well. The Prime Minister’s announcement, if it has created any unity at all, has created unity between the car industry and Greenpeace on the lack of certainty and clarity that is created.
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
Douglas Lumsden says repeatedly that Governments should be working together. The message that the UK Climate Change Committee gave us all—UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments—was that we needed to work together more effectively. We have tried that in the past and had the door closed in our faces. Just days after that meeting, the UK Government made its unilateral announcements, without any prior indication to us or the Welsh Government and without publishing any detail on them. Is that what working together looks like?
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
I am grateful. I agree that we need to take the debate forward in a way that brings people with us. Does Edward Mountain think that the use of language such as “eco-zealots” and “extremists” helps to achieve that or undermines it?
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
I thank the many members who have spoken in the debate—although perhaps slightly less the member who gave that piece of absurdist performance art that we just heard.
The debate has, of course, marked climate week. Perhaps this year more than ever it has felt that every week is climate week, with the news media full of frequent vivid reminders of the climate breakdown that is already happening, such as floods, wildfires, land destroyed and species pushed to the brink. John Swinney painted that picture extremely powerfully, and Mark Ruskell said that we are reaching a tipping point for the climate emergency. In relation to Mr Ruskell’s reflection on how he feels looking at his children and thinking about their future, I would say that anyone who is not fearful of what young people’s future will look like is simply not paying attention.
Climate week feels different this year for another reason, too. Just as we are at the point where the signs of breakdown are at their most stark and the need for action has never been greater, we find ourselves at a political pivot point in our recent history. The UN global stocktake recently told us very clearly that we need a systemic transformation of every aspect of our society, and we need it fast. Inevitably, almost every member who has spoken today has responded to the Prime Minister’s extraordinary announcement last week. The response has been both to the content of the announcement and the way that it was announced, with no detail attached and no prior discussion or co-operation with the other Governments in these islands.
We are now faced with two scenarios. One is where leadership prevails and Governments respond with urgency and give stability for businesses and investment while ensuring fairness and support for households and communities to cope with the rapid change that is needed. The other scenario is characterised by policy reversals and an approach whereby the next general election is the only horizon in sight.
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
I will give way to Mr Swinney.
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Patrick Harvie
I am grateful for the opportunity to offer a counter suggestion to the intervention that we heard a moment ago. Does Kate Forbes agree that, if the UK Government, instead of making the announcement that it did, had come forward with detail about how it would break the artificial link between gas and electricity prices, that would mean that people here in Scotland, where we regenerate cheap, abundant, clean, green and renewable electricity, would see the benefit in their bills? Does she agree that that is one thing that we could do to build public support for more renewables?
