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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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Colin Beattie
Do you think that the present governance arrangements—I use that term in its broadest sense—are fit for purpose?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chains
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Colin Beattie
On Brexit, new restrictions on imported products from the EU came into effect on 1 January. Do you have any sense of what the impact of those restrictions is on Scottish businesses? I know that it is early days, but perhaps there are some early indications.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chains
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Colin Beattie
Is there anything that the Scottish Government can do to ease any of the restrictions that have been brought in, or is that completely out of the control of the Scottish Government?
10:30Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chains
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Colin Beattie
Scotland is facing an acute demographic challenge, perhaps even when compared with the rest of the UK. Inward migration has, over a number of years, been the key driver of population growth. Does the Scottish Government have levers to attract the inward migration that is necessary in order to reduce labour shortages? Have there been discussions with the UK Government on Scotland’s particular issues?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chains
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Colin Beattie
We hear a great deal about the many skilled migrants who came to us from Europe while we were still a member of the European Union, and who have returned to the EU. In particular, we hear that shortages in social care and construction, for example, have perhaps been exacerbated by that. Do you have a firm idea of the actual impact of Brexit on the skills shortages that we are facing?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chains
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Colin Beattie
Is there a way in which the Scottish Government can build more resilience into the Scottish end of the supply chain in order to mitigate the impact of Brexit? I realise that, as you said, there is a limit to how far we can go in that regard, but would that work, or is the issue so totally out of our control that what we can do is marginal?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chains
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Colin Beattie
When you are endeavouring to put in place the measures that you are talking about, I assume that the skills shortages that have apparently arisen as a result of Brexit will constrain how far we can go in encouraging manufacturing in Scotland.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Colin Beattie
My understanding is that it is notoriously difficult to comply with some of the European Commission’s requirements, and that a lot of countries hit that problem.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Colin Beattie
From memory, in past circumstances where there have been similar suspensions, it has turned out to be the delivery agency that has failed to comply, and the Scottish Government has been left to sort that out. Is that the case again?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Colin Beattie
What are the implications of the ESF programme ending in 2023? If the Scottish Government has not been able to clean it up and reclaim any funds, does it simply become a dead loss? If so, are there other financial implications behind that?
