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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Meeting of the Parliament
New Vessels for the Clyde and the Hebrides (Report)
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Graham Simpson
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
New Vessels for the Clyde and the Hebrides (Report)
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Graham Simpson
I have a couple of questions for the cabinet secretary. First, when are we going to find out the Government’s view on project Neptune and what the future arrangements should be? Secondly, is he going to address any of the recommendations in the report that we are debating? For instance, does he agree that there has been a significant lack of transparency and accountability throughout the project?
Meeting of the Parliament
New Vessels for the Clyde and the Hebrides (Report)
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Graham Simpson
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
New Vessels for the Clyde and the Hebrides (Report)
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Graham Simpson
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
Local Bus Services
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Graham Simpson
Will the minister take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
Local Bus Services
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Graham Simpson
I congratulate Mark Ruskell on securing this debate, which is the second debate on buses that we have had in a short spell. Of course, there have been a number of events focusing on the issue of buses recently, including the reception that Mr Ruskell organised. Further, the cross-party group on sustainable transport, which I convene, has also been looking at public transport and how we can decarbonise buses, trains and ferries. There is a lot of interest in those issues in the Parliament and, indeed, a lot of agreement on the challenges and what should be done.
I was very taken by the recent Friends of the Earth paper called “On the Move—Investing in public transport”, which estimates that Scotland needs to shift around 3.7 billion car passenger miles a year to public transport, walking and cycling by 2030 to meet its carbon targets. It says that that will require an average increase in bus and tram passenger miles by around 80 per cent and a more than doubling of rail passenger miles in Scotland compared to pre-Covid levels. Of course, that will take a huge amount of public investment, which John Mason touched on in his excellent speech.
Mr Mason presented us with a challenge: how do we fall out of love with our cars? For me, it is not about falling out of love with our cars; it is about how we improve public transport so that people do not feel the need to drive. That is the challenge. Many people, including myself, like to use public transport, but it has to be there.
Meeting of the Parliament
Local Bus Services
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Graham Simpson
The minister has mentioned fares a couple of times. There seems to be general agreement that we need simpler fares and, probably, lower fares. The Government has committed to publishing a fair fares review. Does the minister know when that will be published? It is long awaited.
Meeting of the Parliament
Local Bus Services
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Graham Simpson
I have no doubt that that is true, but I think that there are also many people who would rather not use their car if they had a viable alternative. Mr Mason will be well aware that there are far too many bus deserts in this country—areas that just do not have a decent service. I live in one of those areas: East Kilbride. I got the bus down to Hamilton during Scottish bus week and I had to walk for half an hour to get to the bus stop that would get me there. That is a ludicrous situation.
We have lost a number of services over the years. I have lost a service—I used to have a decent service and now I do not. I was made aware of a service that runs between Crieff and Perth—the number 155—that is facing the axe on 1 July, and no reasonable alternative has been put forward. Local campaigns are being fought throughout the country, and we really need to do something about the situation.
Part of the answer might be to use the powers in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 that empower councils to take on bus services. However, we have to accept that there could be a colossal cost to that—it has been estimated that, in Glasgow, that could cost £200 million—and that it could take years to do. I am fully in favour of councils taking up those powers, but we need to accept the challenges around that.
We all want bus services to improve. Fares are part of the solution, I think. In England and elsewhere—places such as Germany, which have good systems in place—fares have been cut. We need to make buses more affordable, and the buses need to be there. That is the way that we will get people to use them.
18:14Meeting of the Parliament
Local Bus Services
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Graham Simpson
Gillian Mackay makes an excellent point about the region that we both represent. I live at one end of the region and I think that she lives at the other end. For me to get to Falkirk from East Kilbride would involve several public transport legs, so I end up driving and wishing I did not have to.
Meeting of the Parliament
Active Travel Transformation
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Graham Simpson
I point out to John Swinney that at no point in my contribution did I moan or complain about anything that Patrick Harvie said. Perhaps he will recognise that I started my contribution by saying that I agree with what Patrick Harvie said. If Mr Swinney could adopt that tone, the debate would be all the better for it.
