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 2603 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Colin Beattie
Bryan, would you like to comment on the situation in the hospitality sector?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Colin Beattie
Ruth Boyle, is there anything that the Scottish Government should do that it is not doing now to improve the situation in respect to harassment?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Colin Beattie
Okay. Martin—would you like to comment? Bear in mind that nobody likes to pay taxes—this is a question of how we collect the taxes—and that Governments everywhere are under pressure on their revenues.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Colin Beattie
Can I ask Maxine Smedley how non-domestic rates should be reformed? If that is the correct route to go down, how would you see it happening? There are obviously difficulties in having an turnover tax in relation to retail. Equally, a lot of people would argue that a property-based tax of some form is still the fairest. Maxine, how do you see it going?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Colin Beattie
Paul, do you want to quickly comment on that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Colin Beattie
Is that across the UK or just in Scotland?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Colin Beattie
The ferries issues first came about as a result of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee’s report of 9 December 2020, in which it asked you to carry out your investigation. I presume that that is what triggered your investigation at that time. Is that correct?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Colin Beattie
But the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee’s conclusions have serious implications and surely need to be addressed. If there has been such contractor failure, it has contributed massively to the costs and delays in the project.
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Colin Beattie
Very briefly, because I am conscious of time, paragraph 21 of the briefing refers to the issues between partner organisations and the model of governance being overcomplicated. That is not new; those integration authorities have been in place for some time. Donna Bell said that we have been learning from other integration initiatives by the police and so on. Again, I say that there seems to be very little evidence of that coming through in the Auditor General’s briefing as at January 2022, when the briefing was produced. I am hearing a lot of good words, but I do not see the evidence, although I hope that we will see it in the future. Does anyone want to say anything further on the integration authorities?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Colin Beattie
In effect, your report has not addressed the impact of contractor failure—I do not see that in your report. The Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee certainly raised the flag, so I would have thought that it would have been a priority to look at that issue. It is our public money that has been paid out to the company and, according to the evidence that has been given to this committee, it has not been paid out in the manner that it should have been. It has been paid out by CMAL, on the advice of its lawyers, according to the contract.
