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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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
Oh, come on.
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
Far from the minister saying that she will be prepared to, or could, call in schemes or direct councils on what the charges should be, she is clearly not prepared to do that.
She mentioned Nottingham, which is a very interesting example. Nottingham is about to increase what it charges companies. The reason for that—the minister, probably, and Mr Ruskell, certainly, will rejoice at this—is that the money that is taken in by the Nottingham scheme has gone down, because fewer people need parking spaces. Mr Ruskell will think that that is a good thing. However, in order to fill the gap, the council is increasing the charges. That leads us to the conclusion that, in Nottingham, the example so lauded by some people around this table, the charge is actually a money-making scheme.
If the minister wants to press ahead with the scheme, she should at least fix the cap element of the regulations. I am sure that she could do that.
Exemptions have been mentioned, and the Scottish Police Federation made some very strong comments about that. Calum Steele, its general secretary, fears that the charge could be passed on to rank-and-file police officers. However, if it were not to be passed on to them, it could hit overstretched police budgets.
Unions have come out against the scheme. Keir Greenaway, senior organiser for GMB Scotland, said that the lowest-paid workers would suffer at the worst possible time, with the rising cost of living. He is absolutely right.
As I pointed out two weeks ago, more than half of the employers in Nottingham have passed the parking levy, which is set to be nearly £500 a year per parking space, on to their staff. Some of those staff will be low paid. The scheme is a regressive tax.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
I am aware of those three. You have just completely contradicted yourself—
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
It has been a very full debate, so I do not intend to delay the committee for much longer. I will simply make a couple of points. The first is a point that nobody has really addressed—the minister did not address it when I intervened on her; instead, she wanted to talk about Brexit. This is not the right time to introduce the instrument, because companies and employers are suffering. We need to be building back from the pandemic. The wrong way to do that is to impose extra taxes on employers, which could potentially be passed on to employees—that could well happen.
The matter of exemptions has been raised. The minister has the power to introduce exemptions, but it seems that she does not want to use it. That could cover people such as shift workers. I used to be a shift worker and I had to work in a city centre. There was a concern, particularly for some of my female colleagues, about having to walk through a city centre late at night. What about people who work in an industrial estate at night where there is no public transport? Their employer could well decide to pass on the parking levy to staff.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Made Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
Stuart McMillan has a point, because hybrid working was not in place initially, so we might have struggled. However, it is now in place. He might not be able to say it, but I think that Stuart McMillan actually agrees with my point that we could act at pace.
Both the DPLR Committee and the COVID-19 Recovery Committee have said that the affirmative procedure should be the default. Therefore, I hope that the COVID-19 Recovery Committee will reject forthwith anything that is done otherwise, unless it is to get rid of restrictions.
Presiding Officer, too many committee reports are ignored by the Government. This report is for the Government, but it is also for Parliament. I hope that you and your colleagues will take a stand, because you are there to defend Parliament. We have been bypassed for the past two years and it has to stop.
15:55Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Made Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
I think that I am in my last minute, but I will take an intervention if I am given time to do so.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Made Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
Would the Deputy First Minister accept that it is possible to have an expedited procedure, as was recommended in the report? Does he accept that Parliament can act at pace and does not need to take 40 days when we use an affirmative procedure, and that we could change things if we need to act quickly?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Made Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
I am making the point that I believe that this Parliament is up to the job of scrutinising any piece of legislation and that we can do so at pace. Given that we have a hybrid form of working now, people can do that from home. I would be prepared to work weekends, if that was necessary.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
OVO Energy (Redundancies)
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Graham Simpson
Murdo Fraser is right. That is utterly unacceptable.
I came across a quote from a spokesman for OVO, who said:
“Scotland is a great place for our business, which is why we are making it an operational centre of excellence and one of our three office locations.
We are opening a new OVO Academy in Glasgow ... While we are closing some of our offices, there is an opportunity for remote working. ... We are committed to investing in Scotland; creating higher skilled, better paid jobs in Scotland.”
If only I could believe that. I do not believe it, and OVO should think again.
17:59
