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 2298 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Miles Briggs
Does anyone else want to come in on that point, or are you in also in the dark on software systems?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Miles Briggs
Is it your understanding that the same software providers will provide systems across the UK, so that the systems are compatible? We are not necessarily talking about different providers being chosen separately. I ask that question because I know from a former life on the Health and Sport Committee that different national health service boards chose different IT systems, which meant that they could not communicate, which is why health IT in Scotland is so bad.
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
I thank the minister for that answer and I respect what she has to say, but the Edinburgh tram inquiry has now been running for over eight years. To date, it has cost Scottish taxpayers £13.1 million, and the end is still not in sight. The cost of the inquiry now stands at more than the cost of the Iraq war investigation. The Inquiries Act 2005 obliges the chair to consider costs at all times if they are funded from the public purse. I ask the minister a very simple question: does she believe that the inquiry has been value for money?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
International evidence demonstrates that, for many universities in different countries, such as Ireland, the introduction of rent controls has resulted in students being further away from being able to access private rented accommodation. Has the Government done any work to look at what impact rent controls will have in Scotland?
Meeting of the Parliament
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
I can tell the cabinet secretary that what is worrying landlords, especially those in the social rented sector, is the bill. That sector is worried about where it will find the finance to take forward projects that are so vitally needed across our communities. The rent freezes that have been implemented have failed to make any difference. Instead, they have actually driven up rents for those who have tried to further their tenancies.
Conservative members remain concerned about the bill’s impact. We are concerned about the social rented sector and about students seeking private tenancies in their second year at university. Many universities have outlined concerns about students who come to cities across our country being unable to find accommodation; indeed, they are being told not to come. We are concerned about homeless people finding it even more difficult to find a home. We are concerned about the shattering of the confidence to invest that the bill is driving. We are concerned about the loss of vital homes to live in and we are concerned that the bill could trigger a greater housing crisis in Scotland than we have already seen.
The Scottish Conservatives will continue to hold the Government to account on the impact that the bill could have. Labour members have forced ministers to take this action, and they can congratulate themselves for that, but they, too, will be to blame if we see the sort of crisis that all the international evidence suggests rent controls deliver.
15:47Meeting of the Parliament
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Miles Briggs
Given that the Labour Party has developed and pushed the policy, is the member able to say in what other part in the world such an approach has not been removed?
