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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Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Graham Simpson
The way to tackle those things is by improving public transport, which I will come to.
Ms Gilruth says that the Government can call in schemes, but when she was given the opportunity yesterday, she refused to say what she thought an acceptable cap might be, and instead said that that is up to councils. Is £300, £500 or £1,000 a year okay? I will allow the minister to intervene if she wants to respond.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Graham Simpson
Yesterday, I moved in committee a motion to annul an instrument that brought in provisions in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 to allow councils to introduce the hated workplace parking tax. Not surprisingly, thanks to the SNP and the Greens, my motion was defeated. The motion gave the Minister for Transport the chance to do the right thing—to step back from the precipice—but she did not take it.
The SNP and its coalition of chaos partners have chosen to ignore business, they have chosen to ignore the entire public sector, and they have chosen to ignore shift workers and people who are low paid. If they want to get people out of their cars, they could have used the 2019 act to introduce provisions on public transport partnerships, but they have not done that.
It has surely not passed anyone by that we have been through a tough time in the past two years. It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that work patterns have changed, and even the most anti-business person would accept that our town and city centres have been particularly hard hit.
Liz Cameron, who is the chief executive of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said that businesses are “incredulous”. They are. I have been contacted by a number of businesses, all of which are too nervous to go public. What a sorry state of affairs. Unlike the minister, I have spoken to the business sector, including in the east midlands, where people are worried about what is to come in Leicester—the home of Walkers Crisps, which has a big car park. This could be Leicester’s crisp tax.
It is not as though companies that have parking spaces for staff and visitors are not already paying for them: the Scottish Retail Consortium has made the point that they pay through business rates.
The tax is a double whammy on commuting. The workplace parking tax is simply a money-raising tool for councils, which—let’s face it—need everything they can get. In order to bring in the levy, a council needs merely to have a local transport strategy. The car park tax must go towards helping with that strategy, which means that it does not need to be about reducing motor vehicle travel—it can be used for anything. The money will go into a general pot.
It is no wonder that SNP councils that have been denied funds by their own Government are gearing up to bring in the tax. Anti-car City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow City Council cannot wait, although Susan Aitken, who has one eye on the council elections, is trying temporarily to distance herself from it. In the unfortunate event that Ms Aitken remains as Glasgow council leader after May, we can expect her to get back on track. Her official, connectivity officer Deborah Paton, excitedly told councillors that a levy could raise as much as £30 million, but that was before Jenny Gilruth confirmed that there would be no limit on what councils can charge.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Graham Simpson
Once again, the minister refuses to say what she thinks would be an acceptable limit.
It is not clear what the workplace parking tax is meant to achieve. If it is meant to persuade people to use public transport, public transport first needs to improve. We know that the SNP is no good when it comes to running things. When it runs the ferries, islanders are left stranded. Now it wants to run the trains, but cannot tell us what it wants to do with them, apart from cut services and increase fares. From nat sail to nat rail, it all adds up to a big nat fail.
That is what happens when you give the Greens influence or—even worse—bring them into Government. A party that wants to take us back to the stone age has two Government ministers. It is like having the Flintstones around the Cabinet table, with Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater as Fred and Wilma.
The tax will hit workers. We have seen that in Nottingham, where more than half of affected employers pass on the cost to their staff. However, when we tried to exempt groups including the police, the fire brigade, ambulance staff, teachers, shift workers and people who live or work nowhere near public transport, the SNP and the Greens blocked that. Yesterday, Ms Gilruth refused to do anything about those sectors, and confirmed to Liam Kerr that the Government has done no modelling on what effect the hated workplace parking tax might have. It is her rather strange view that we do modelling only once something is already in place.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Workplace Parking Licensing Schemes
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Graham Simpson
I have already given way. The minister can explain that in her speech.
The SNP and the Greens say that they want to get people out of their cars. The way to do that is not by hammering hard-working Scots who are just trying to get on with life. A viable alternative needs to be offered. If we want people to stop driving petrol and diesel cars, the electric vehicle charging network needs to be up to scratch, but it is not. If we want people to use public transport, it has to be there in the first place and it needs to be cheap to use, reliable and frequent, but it is not. The job of Government is to help people, not to hinder them. The coalition of chaos does not get that, but we do.
I move,
That the Parliament condemns taxing drivers through the introduction of the Workplace Parking Levy, and believes that the focus of the Scottish Government should be on supporting the roll-out of electric vehicles and the infrastructure to support them and on making public transport more efficient and affordable, not on using taxes to force families in Scotland into giving up their cars.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
As a follow-up, why have you chosen not to use those powers and set out further exemptions?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
You said that it is up to local councils to set out exemptions, and then you agreed with me that you could do it in regulations, which you can but you have chosen not to.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
We will come to that in the debate.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
You said in your opening comments that the instrument had been delayed because of Covid. As I have pointed out, businesses are still struggling. Why do you think that now is the right time to introduce the instrument?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
Will the minister give way?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
I will try not to take up too much of the committee’s time but, clearly, committee members are very engaged with the issue. I will take any interventions, including from the minister, if possible. I know that she is joining us remotely but, if she wants to intervene, I will allow her to do so, if I can, because we need a proper debate.
The minister said that the reason why the instrument has only just been developed and brought before Parliament is because of Covid—those were her words. That is exactly the reason why it is wrong to introduce the measure now. Businesses are still recovering from the pandemic. The committee has heard concerns from several organisations, including the Food and Drink Federation Scotland and the Scottish Retail Consortium, and we know that Scottish Chambers of Commerce, the CBI and a number of other organisations have concerns. Businesses have made it absolutely clear that this is the wrong time to introduce the measure.
To go back to what Ms Hyslop said, timing is important. Indeed, it is crucial. Businesses are struggling, and they need to recover. The last thing that they need now is an extra tax, and this is an extra tax.
