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 1342 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Creative Scotland (Funding for Rein)
Meeting date: 30 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
Mr Wilson, with regard to ensuring that artistic freedom continues to flourish but also recognising that public money is involved and that people have differing views about what money should be spent on, what does the board do in looking at the overall actions of the day-to-day work of Creative Scotland employees?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
Good morning, cabinet secretary. You said earlier that we are part of a global economy and that people can invest in any jurisdiction. You also said that skills and talent are vital in order to attract investment. I think that we have skills and talent in abundance in our energy industry. There is a huge number of folk in oil and gas who have the skills and talent to help us to make good in the renewables revolution.
However, in this past week, on Monday, Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce published its “Energy Transition 39th Survey”, and it said that confidence in the United Kingdom has plunged to a record low. I recognise that we are in a purdah period, so the Scottish Government cannot move forward with the green industrial strategy and the energy strategy, and that a huge amount of policy decision making in this area is reserved. How do we ensure that we rebuild that confidence so that the just transition moves jobs from oil and gas, as required, into renewables without losing the skills and talent? How do we persuade the UK Government to think logically and work with us to ensure that that happens?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
It is.
You have talked about consents, cabinet secretary. Consenting—not just through devolved regulation or legislation, but through UK-wide legislation—has been a frustration for a number of players in the sector. How do we get better at consenting? How do we go about listening to people’s views on the barriers that they feel that there are, and how do we make the change—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
On Friday, I had an energy day—although every day is probably an energy day for a north-east MSP—when I met a renewables company in the morning and folk from the oil and gas sector in the afternoon. You stated that 100,000 jobs are at risk if Labour sticks to its plans when it gets into Government.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
I have a final question.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
How do we get better at that? How do we ensure that the UK Government listens and becomes better at that as well?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 29 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
I get that, but I am trying to set context.
That 100,000 number is not one that politicians have come up with: independent experts said that 100,000 jobs would be at risk. One of the key things that was said to me on Friday is that politicians do not listen. How do we ensure that the Scottish Government and, I hope, their UK counterparts start to listen to the experts so that we can get the just transition absolutely right, retain skills and talent and attract the inward investment that we need in our jurisdiction?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
So, we can have all those other agreements on security and cyberattacks, for example, but that does not mean that the EU will be willing to look at trade again. That is what we are looking at today. I am interested in jobs, the economy and money in people’s pockets, all of which have gone to pot since Brexit.
I will throw back some of the words that you guys have used this morning. You said that the UK is out of sight and out of mind. In addition, one of you said that, when it came to certain things, the UK is not relevant. Will the UK continue to be out of sight and not relevant when it comes to renegotiating trade agreements?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
I will not take the opportunity to crack a joke about CBAMs.
All the things that you are talking about are peripheral things in what I would expect to be normal relationships where countries are trying to get co-operation. None of the things that you said should happen—I do not disagree with many of them—is likely to lead to a change in the trade and co-operation agreement in the near future. That concerns me, and it concerns many people, because it affects the general public through the economy, jobs and livelihoods.
Would you like to comment, Mr Hamilton?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Kevin Stewart
Good morning, panel. What you are describing is a guddle, basically—a guddle of the UK’s own making.
I will turn to your report and some of your conclusions. You say:
“Brexit has had a negative impact on UK-EU goods trade.”
I would say that that is probably an understatement. You then go into more depth and say:
“Costs and administration have increased, goods trade is down and there are concerns”
about newly negotiated FTAs. You say:
“If left unresolved, UK goods trade will continue to suffer, with wider impacts on livelihoods, economic growth and job creation, in already difficult”
times. You have also stated this morning that it looks unlikely that EU partners are willing to open up agreements again, and Peter Holmes said that we need to ask what the UK can offer.
How do we get out of this situation, gentlemen? In my opinion, we should never have left the EU in the first place, but how do we get back in there to a degree to protect industry and jobs here in Scotland and elsewhere in these islands?
