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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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3

Meeting date: 14 May 2024

Miles Briggs

I am pleased to open the debate on the group, which is focused on adding clarity to the provisions in the bill relating to future regulations on the responsible developers scheme. The lack of detail on the scheme in the bill has caused some concern among stakeholders. Although I welcome the minister’s commitment to consult ahead of any regulations being introduced, there is an opportunity to strengthen the bill with these amendments.

Amendment 30 would add provisions allowing processes for decision making on membership of the responsible developers scheme to be added to any regulations that establish the scheme. Given the potential consequences of developers being refused membership or having it withdrawn, the transparency of decision making is crucial, and that underpins the intentions of my amendments.

Amendments 36, 37 and 38 offer assurances to those who may become members of the responsible developers scheme that there will be a right of appeal against any decisions that may impact on them, such as membership of the scheme being refused or withdrawn, or a member being added to the prohibited developers list. Those decisions could have a significant impact on businesses and developers, and it is right that there should be a right of appeal.

My amendments 31 and 33 are similar to the probing amendments that I lodged at stage 2, and they would require ministers to set eligibility according to developers’ varying sizes and situations. In England and Wales, care has been taken to consider the exposure of builders that are small and medium-sized enterprises. As things stand, Scotland’s SME developers lack protection in the bill and lack certainty about the future direction of travel that the bill might bring. Should they be subject to the building safety levy, there are suggestions that small developers could be at risk of two new forms of additional taxation and charges.

I took on board the minister’s remarks at stage 2 and have adapted the amendments to take into account the sentiments in the minister’s letter to the committee. For example, the amendments require ministers to set regulations in relation to the size and circumstances of developers, as it was suggested that specifying the turnover of those businesses in the bill would reduce the flexibility of the regulations prior to work being done to consult on what those regulations should contain.

We know that we are not meeting building targets across Scotland and that our SME sector, which is so important to delivering the homes that we need in rural and island communities, is already under significant pressure. I therefore believe that the amendments provide the right balance.

I move amendment 30.

Meeting of the Parliament

Portfolio Question Time

Meeting date: 8 May 2024

Miles Briggs

There is a lot to welcome in the bill, and we have welcomed many parts of it, but rent controls, which are part of the bill, are hugely damaging the market in Scotland. Rent controls have led to a decrease in supply. Some 17 per cent of landlords are saying that they will sell or consider selling their property. Rent controls are also driving up rents, and we have the highest increase in rents anywhere in the United Kingdom. I ask the minister a very simple question: now that the Bute house agreement has come to an end, will he agree to review the bill and work with parties that want to ensure that the bill will help renters in Scotland, not hinder them?