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 3346 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Administration of Scottish Income Tax 2022-23
Meeting date: 22 February 2024
Graham Simpson
I want to assure Mr Taylor that I was not trying to wriggle out of paying tax. [Laughter.] It was merely an example. I was thinking of somebody else—someone who was not an MSP.
That takes me on to another point. From all the papers that we have here, it is quite clear that HMRC does not know where a lot of people live. Why is that?
Public Audit Committee
Administration of Scottish Income Tax 2022-23
Meeting date: 22 February 2024
Graham Simpson
However, in order to be able to apply the right tax rates now that there are different rates of tax, surely it is important for HMRC to know where people live.
Public Audit Committee
Administration of Scottish Income Tax 2022-23
Meeting date: 22 February 2024
Graham Simpson
Okay. I will leave it there for now, convener.
Public Audit Committee
Administration of Scottish Income Tax 2022-23
Meeting date: 22 February 2024
Graham Simpson
I am sorry to hark on about this, but let us say that I am on PAYE, as a lot of people are. I know that it is not a legal requirement to tell HMRC, but whose responsibility is it to tell HMRC where somebody lives? Is it the employer’s or the employee’s?
Public Audit Committee
Administration of Scottish Income Tax 2022-23
Meeting date: 22 February 2024
Graham Simpson
Surely we know who owes what.
Public Audit Committee
Administration of Scottish Income Tax 2022-23
Meeting date: 22 February 2024
Graham Simpson
I will now ask what might be described as a daft-laddie question. Perhaps somebody can help me out. If I lived in Carlisle but I worked for a company in Dumfries and travelled to Dumfries every day to work, which tax rate would I pay? Would I pay the English tax rate or the Scottish tax rate?
Meeting of the Parliament
Nuclear Energy
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Graham Simpson
It has been interesting to listen to the debate so far, and I congratulate my colleague Douglas Lumsden on bringing it to the chamber.
Jackie Dunbar asked where new nuclear provision should be sited. Well, it cannot currently be sited anywhere, because the SNP is blocking it under the planning rules. If she wants to remove those planning restrictions, she might see applications coming forward.
Douglas Lumsden is absolutely right to highlight that the main point of all this is energy security. I would have thought that members on all sides of the chamber—by the way, I share Douglas Lumsden’s disappointment that there are no Green members taking part in the debate—would recognise the need for Scotland and the rest of the UK to be energy secure, in particular in the light of the conflict in Ukraine. Surely we do not want to be held to ransom for our energy by despots such as Vladimir Putin.
We need a mix of energy. We need wind farms, and there is a role for hydro, too. However, we have to accept that the wind does not blow all the time and that there is a need to cover that base load, which is why nuclear has a role. I was delighted when the UK Government announced that it would be setting up Great British Nuclear to herald the introduction of small modular reactors. I can tell members, if they do not know already, that those reactors do not have to be built on site; they can be built in factories and then transferred to their ultimate locations. That is a great development—it is good for the economy, for jobs and for skills.
The UK Government has an ambition—I wish that the Scottish Government would get on board with this—to have a quarter of our energy provided by nuclear by 2050. I would like Scotland to be part of that.
What does nuclear provide? It provides the energy security that I spoke about. Countries that phase out nuclear—Germany is a good example—become critically dependent on natural gas generation to guarantee security of supply. Nuclear provides grid stability and security and provides a non-weather-dependent 24/7 base load. It also provides green energy—it is as green as renewables. According to the UN, nuclear has the lowest life cycle carbon intensity, the lowest land use and impact on ecosystems, and the lowest mineral and metal use. One would have thought that Green Party members would welcome that.
Of course, there is an economic case for nuclear, too. Douglas Lumsden spoke about skills. We both attended the meeting in Parliament where, as he mentioned, we heard a powerful presentation from a young apprentice, who might well have to leave Scotland if we end up with no nuclear industry here. That would be a crying shame.
Scotland needs nuclear, and I thank Douglas Lumsden once again for securing the debate.
17:54Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Graham Simpson
There remains a lack of knowledge among many people on exactly which bees need help. It is wild bees, such as the species that I champion—the bilberry bumblebee—that are in trouble, not honey bees. In fact, there are some situations in which honey bees can be a risk to wild bees as they compete for flowers and pass on diseases. Does the cabinet secretary agree that we need to do more to regulate use of managed bees by, for example, taking precautions to avoid hives being placed in protected areas that are important to rare species?
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Graham Simpson
We are told that the full business case for the replacement Monklands hospital will be ready next year. That is a year late. Can the cabinet secretary promise that we will have a new hospital open in 2031, as we were promised?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Graham Simpson
How many are there?
