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 2776 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Electronic Trade Documents Bill
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
If you had introduced an LCM earlier, do you think that you would have been in a position to say yes?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
What is your longest outstanding case?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
I accept that things are improving, but it is hard to accept that cases have taken six years. You cannot blame the pandemic for a six-year, five-year or four-year delay. How did we get to that position?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
I have a question on staffing. You know that the world of work has changed since the pandemic and a lot more people are now working from home. How has that affected ROS?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
Are people expected to come in for a certain number of days or is that flexible?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Electronic Trade Documents Bill
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
I am quite comfortable with the way in which you have done it. Even though it has taken a bit of time, you have arrived at a conclusion, everybody has got round the table and talked sensibly, changes have been made and you are now in a position to recommend that we accept it. That is a mature way of going about things. Will you explain to the committee what the main sticking points were, originally? I know that they have been ironed out, but it would good for us to understand them.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
Okay. I have one more question, convener, if that is okay.
I was looking through the list of the 21 registers for which you are responsible, some of which sound really quite fascinating. There are all sorts: the register of the great seal, the register of the quarter seal, the register of the cachet seal—I hope that I pronounced that correctly—the register of service of heirs, and so on. Which one of those registers takes up the most time for you, and are there any that take up no time?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
I realise that every case is different—some are really complicated—but, once you have cleared that backlog, what would be the longest time that you anticipate a case would take?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
It is extraordinary. It just seems so basic. Signing something should be bread and butter to a solicitor. I know that you said that you do not charge when a solicitor has made a mistake but do you think that the solicitor is charging their client?
Meeting of the Parliament
Caledonian MacBrayne Services (Resilience Fund)
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Graham Simpson
Okay, I will carry on.
Mr Stewart was just minutes into the job when I asked him an urgent question about what the Government was doing to restore ferry services between Mallaig, Oban and Lochboisdale in South Uist, in light of the announcement that the services were to be withdrawn from 5 April to 13 May. He talked about recognising the challenges that were faced and said that the islands remained open for business. I then asked him whether he would look at a compensation scheme and reduced fares for islanders. He said that he would be speaking to CalMac that day and would “seek mitigations” and “solutions”.
Alasdair Allan had another go on the idea of a business resilience fund and did slightly better: the minister said that he would
“need to consider it further”—[Official Report, 30 March 2023; c 60.]
which is not quite a commitment.
Douglas Ross raised exactly the same issue last week because, three months on, things are no better. In fact, they are worse, with sailings of the MV Lord of the Isles between Mallaig and Lochboisdale cancelled until the end of June. As we have heard, locals who have protested in their hundreds have said that CalMac is ushering in “modern day Highland clearances”.
CalMac uses something that is called a matrix to decide which services to run when there are problems, which is quite a lot of the time. John Daniel Peteranna of the South Uist business ferry impact group, which organised the demonstration, said of the matrix that
“It is as vague and woolly as you can get and that is what they use to make decisions. It is hot air. We think it is commercially better for them to do this ... The matrix should look at the cultural and economic impact but I cannot make any sense of the rubbish that has been written. We need an explanation of what it means ... It is like the Highland Clearances again.”
Robbie Drummond, who is CalMac’s chief executive, has been meeting islanders this week. Mr Drummond had a taste of what they are going through when he reportedly could not get his car on the ferry and travelled a very long way round to get there—if it had been Lorna Slater, she would of course have just chartered a boat. Mr Drummond has promised a review of the matrix; we have heard today that the cabinet secretary will do the same.
The upshot is this: people on the islands are suffering because of mismanagement of our ferries under the SNP. The Government owns Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd, which buys the boats and owns them; it also owns CalMac, which runs the ferries. Sitting above them is Transport Scotland and whoever is minister of the day. The Government even owns the yard that is building two new ferries—eventually. There is no one else to blame; the Government is responsible. Therefore, when people are out of pocket because of it, it should compensate them—it really is that simple.
Right now, island life is being made a misery, so the Government’s amendment is quite shameful; it removes all mention of a compensation scheme. Any islander watching today will be furious; they are being let down and now, they are being ignored. I ask members to support my amendment and reject the Government’s.
I move amendment S6M-09463.1, to insert at end:
“; notes the anger expressed by islanders at repeated disruption, which is impacting on business and day-to-day life; calls on the Scottish Government to establish the fund, which should be permanent, without delay, and welcomes the commitment by CalMac to review its route scoring matrix.”
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