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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 2176 contributions
|
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Miles Briggs
On a wider issue with the Scottish digital strategy, on which you have all touched, are any local authorities likely to do something different, given the different contracts that we have discussed and how those sometimes stretch into other parts of our local government IT systems? Will the strategy resolve the issue and provide for a single system that allows communication not only with Government, but among local authorities?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. I hope that, given the pressures on planning departments and in relation to access to planning specialists, there might be an opportunity for councils to share decision making and to share people who are in high demand for planning. There might be opportunities, there.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Miles Briggs
Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Miles Briggs
I am happy enough with the instrument, but I am a bit concerned about the lack of data on which councils it would apply to. I wonder whether we could request that data and, indeed, look to gather it in the future, given that, with the suspension of the Scottish Government’s supersponsor scheme, councils might be facing a higher burden as a result of council tax not being collected.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
To ask the Scottish Government when it anticipates a conclusion to the Edinburgh tram inquiry. (S6O-01443)
Meeting of the Parliament
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
I heard what the cabinet secretary has just told the Parliament. Can she reference where that evidence comes from?
Meeting of the Parliament
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
On a point of order, Presiding Officer.
Meeting of the Parliament
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
Presiding Officer, I think that the cabinet secretary is deliberately trying not to answer the question that I asked her. I asked her for the reference for what she has just told Parliament—that the number of private tenancies has increased in Scotland. Where has that come from?
Meeting of the Parliament
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
I start by thanking all the organisations that have provided useful briefings during the passage of the emergency bill, and I thank the Parliament’s bill team for the work that it has done.
As I said during the stage 1 debate, the Scottish housing market is complex, especially here in the capital. We rely on the mixed-housing model to provide the homes that Scotland needs now and in the future.
The Scottish Conservatives continue to be concerned about the impact that the bill will have. I will use my time to speak about those whom the bill will not impact on and whom it will not support, who are already being failed by this Scottish National Party and Scottish Green Party Government. They are the 26,000 homeless households in Scotland.
The cabinet secretary said that everyone should have a safe and warm place to live. I agree. However, under the SNP Government, homelessness applications have increased by 3 per cent. There has been a 4 per cent increase in households in temporary accommodation. In Scotland today, 32,592 adults and 14,372 children are registered as homeless. The number of homeless adults has increased by 6 per cent, and the number of homeless children has increased by 17 per cent.
Households with children spend more time in temporary accommodation. Households with children are 4 per cent more likely to spend seven to 12 months in temporary accommodation than households without children are, and they are 6 per cent more likely to spend more than a year in temporary accommodation.
Homelessness applications are taking longer, on average, to process. It now takes an average of 19 days for a homelessness application to be assessed. That is up by three days on the previous year.
Those are shocking statistics. The people whom they concern are those who are furthest from the housing market—and who are now likely to be even further away, thanks to the impact of the bill.
As Crisis said to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on Tuesday,
“the homelessness system is bursting at the seams. It has, as I am sure that members see in their constituencies all the time, been pushed to breaking point.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 4 October 2022; c 9.]
Crisis also expressed concern about the knock-on impacts that there might be on the market. It stated:
“From our perspective, when there is a reduction in the supply of private rented housing, those who are most likely to be squeezed out of the market are those at the lowest end of the income distribution and those at the highest risk of homelessness ... There is a worry that it will become more difficult to support people who are experiencing homelessness into tenancies.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 4 October 2022; c 15.]
The loss of significant numbers of private rented properties is likely to be a consequence of the legislation, if it is not lifted as soon as possible. That impact will be even greater in rural communities. There is international evidence that demonstrates the impact of the sort of intervention that we are seeing SNP and Green ministers make in the housing market.
