Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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Displaying 2176 contributions

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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

National Planning Framework 4

Meeting date: 29 November 2022

Miles Briggs

The first question follows on from Paul McLennan’s question. Last week, we heard from Jim Miller, chair of Heads of Planning Scotland, who suggested that his interpretation of policy 27(d) pointed towards a ban. That is where there has been concern. I saw the minister coming in with a coffee this morning; I do not know whether he used a drive-through to get that. It is important to make sure that, when the policy gets down to local authority level, it is not misinterpreted.

Policy 27 was not even part of the original consultation and there has been no subsequent consultation on it. I was pleased to hear what the minister said to Paul McLennan, but, as for any future consultation on the policy, he said, “This is it”. What will that policy look like in guidance, because that is not clear, given the interpretation that people are taking from NPF4 currently?

Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

National Planning Framework 4

Meeting date: 29 November 2022

Miles Briggs

Good morning to you, minister, and to your officials, and thank you for joining us. You mentioned that NPF4 has been a cross-Government endeavour. I welcome the positive and constructive nature of the discussions that we have had, but I am concerned about where housing sits in NPF4 and the fact that the housing crisis is not necessarily being addressed. I have a few specific questions on that. How does the revised NPF4 address the issue of potential underdelivery of land in the pipeline? Is there any trigger in place if land is not being brought forward?

Meeting of the Parliament

Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month 2022

Meeting date: 29 November 2022

Miles Briggs

I thank Clare Adamson for bringing the debate to the chamber this year—it is very welcome that members can contribute to it. I also welcome all the guests in the public gallery—it is great to see so many people who have been campaigning for such a long time, and who ensure that we continue to have these debates, which are so important.

As Willie Coffey and Sue Webber said, the debate is now a really important event in the parliamentary diary, as it presents an opportunity for us all to remember those whom we have lost to the disease, as well as those who have lived, which it is also important to recognise.

I thank colleagues for their kind words about my former MSP colleague, John Scott, who was in Parliament just a couple of weeks ago with his grandchildren. He is well and enjoying life outside of politics, which is maybe a lesson for us all, to be quite honest. It was good to see him. I know that he follows these debates.

I will touch on some of the information that was provided to me during the drop-in session that was held on 17 November, during pancreatic cancer awareness month. In my region, in 2020, 251 people were diagnosed through our South East Scotland Cancer Network. Statistically, the situation is grim: on average, only 27.3 per cent of people with pancreatic cancer survive for more than a year after diagnosis. That is what we need to focus all of our thoughts on.

As Carol Mochan mentioned, yesterday, along with Jackie Baillie, I co-chaired the Scottish cancer conference. The report that I am holding is one of the most shocking reports that I have ever seen. Sorry, Presiding Officer—it is another purple prop. The report is called “Cancer in the UK: Deprivation and cancer inequalities in Scotland”, and I hope that everyone across the Parliament has a chance to read it, because it shows the need for an emergency response to the location of cancer services in Scotland.

I welcome the work that is currently taking place around the Scottish Government’s national cancer strategy, which overlaps with what for many years we have been calling for with regard to pancreatic cancer, which is real investment in rapid diagnosis and decision-to-treat pathways. We need to see improvement on those.

I will close on a positive note. Just before the pandemic, I was delighted to visit the Precision Panc project at the Beatson west of Scotland cancer centre. Ahead of the debate, I reached out to find out what work has been going on, because it is important to recognise the amazing achievements in Scotland at the moment. Thirty-two recruitment centres have been put in place, and I believe that 500 patients are registered and 300 patients have been able to progress to clinical trials. The primus 006 and 008 trials will be coming over the next three to six months. We are taking welcome steps forward.

I was also told that biopsy for pancreatic cancer has now become the norm, which it is incredibly important and welcome. Speaking to patients, I heard that many people progress to a palliative pathway without any investigation. It is also important that we are now seeing the molecular profiling of pancreatic cancer becoming a reality in the NHS.

However, there are two challenges, specifically around research, which I will close on. We know that there is a need for sustained investment and for pharmaceutical partners to be part of that by investing in pancreatic cancer research.

On the back of this debate, I hope that ministers will look at the issue as part of consideration of the national cancer strategy. We need pancreatic cancer to be given priority for rapid diagnosis and decision-to-treat pathways, because the country is not where it needs to be in that regard. Each and every one of us should challenge the Government on that. I know from the conversations that I had yesterday at the Scottish cancer conference that that is what the sector wants. We should all work towards that.

17:40