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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Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Graham Simpson
We have been pressing the Scottish Government to take action on the matter for years and it has failed to do so. Thousands of Scots are trapped in unsafe flats, with little hope of ever selling them.
Last week, in England, Michael Gove put developers on notice. They have two months to agree to a funding scheme, or measures could be put into law. What is happening here? Clauses in the Building Safety Bill will allow the United Kingdom Government to introduce a levy on developers of high-rise buildings. What is happening here? Why has flammable cladding still not been banned in Scotland? When will it be banned?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Graham Simpson
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to help residents in flats that have unsafe cladding. (S6O-00635)
Meeting of the Parliament
Fire Alarm Standards
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Graham Simpson
The penalty for non-compliance will come if people have insurance claims turned down because they do not have such alarms. Is the cabinet secretary seriously saying that that will not happen?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Graham Simpson
Yes. Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to join you this morning.
Before I get into my pitch for the CPG, I will just say how much I enjoyed the committee’s recent debate in the chamber. I thought that it was excellent, and I appreciated your kind comments afterwards, convener. During that debate, I mentioned—I am being really cheeky here, but this is to inform the committee—that I have a proposed member’s bill coming up. The consultation for that will go live next Thursday, and I will send it to the committee.
Having got that out of the way, I will talk about the CPG on sustainable transport. The background is that, in the previous session, there was a CPG on cycling, walking and buses and a separate CPG on rail. Those of us who were members of one or both of those groups got together and decided that it would make sense to merge them and call it the cross-party group on sustainable transport. Those who were involved in those—[Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament
Car Travel
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Graham Simpson
I would describe the statement as a starting point. There is stuff in there that is worth discussing and I look forward to doing that when I next meet the minister. However, like many Government documents, it is full of warm words but little in the way of meaningful action.
The first question that I have is this: what is the 20 per cent reduction in car miles—I say “miles” because that is what we deal with in this country, not kilometres—based on? For many people in Scotland, and I think that the minister knows this because he lives in a rural part of the country, the car is a necessity, so where will that 20 per cent come from? If we are going to target urban areas more than rural areas, what will be the difference between them?
If we want to get people out of cars, we need to give them an alternative. That alternative could be active travel—I very much support spending on that—or it could be public transport. We have seen announcements of an increase in rail fares and service cuts, and we have seen no meaningful reform to the bus system. What does the minister say about that? How does that encourage people on to public transport?
We have also had vague promises for years of a national smart card for public transport. There is no sign of that yet, yet delegates to the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—were able to have one. If it was good enough for them, why is it not good enough for the rest of the country? When will we get that national smart card?
Finally, near the end of the minister’s statement, he got in a mention of fuel duty. We have had an 11-year freeze on fuel duty; now the minister says that he wants to take control of it. Is he suggesting that we end the freeze? What is he suggesting? What does he want to replace it with? Perhaps he can tell us.
Meeting of the Parliament
Car Travel
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Graham Simpson
I have been for some time.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Made Affirmative Procedure Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Graham Simpson
Mr Swinney, I want to ask about something that witnesses have raised and that we have not covered yet: the idea that we should introduce sunset provisions in both primary and secondary legislation. What are your thoughts on that?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Instruments subject to Made Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Graham Simpson
I can comment on them all. SSI 2021/478 is not contentious, so I will not say a great deal about it. It relates to a technical issue in the chamber. MSPs were unable to vote on a previous set of regulations, which therefore expired. The regulations have now been relaid—that is now out of the way.
However, I take a different view on the other regulations, which came in over the festive period and which relate to leisure, sporting events, theatres, pubs and night clubs. Members of the public and the people who are involved in those sectors know very well what happened. Sporting events were closed down; the football calendar—certainly, the Scottish Premier League—was put on pause—[Inaudible.]
We have just been discussing the made affirmative procedure. My view is that the use of that procedure for those regulations was not appropriate. They would have benefited from some scrutiny but they had none. Parliament could have made time for the use of the affirmative procedure. We have acted—[Inaudible.]—at times previously. The affirmative procedure is the better procedure to use in such instances. On that basis, I will be moving against SSIs 2021/475, 2021/496, 2021/497 and 2021/498.
12:00Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Made Affirmative Procedure Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Graham Simpson
Yes, thank you. Can I carry on, convener?
