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 2904 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
John Mason
Thank you very much.
The third and final matter that I want to raise is ownership—co-operatives and so on—that I saw in the committee’s letter, and in the Government’s response. The committee feels—I agree—that the co-operative model can be very good. It keeps decision-making in communities, and such companies are less likely to be taken over and all that kind of thing. Is the Government investing in co-operatives? How does it see the mixed model of ownership?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
John Mason
I have no relevant interests to declare.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Subsidy Control Bill
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
John Mason
As the minister may know, I am a substitute member of the committee, so I may not be quite as up to speed as some of my colleagues on this subject. I noted your fifth point in your introductory comments, which was about lack of detail and I want to focus on that. I saw in last week’s evidence that Professor Steve Fothergill talked about how the lack of detail in the bill is worrying, so I want to explore that a little bit more. There was also the argument that EU legislation in the past and state aid was all very much a tick-box process and was very black and white, but the new approach is meant to be more principles-based. What is your view on that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Subsidy Control Bill
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
John Mason
Thanks for those helpful responses. Scottish Enterprise and others mentioned the specific phrase, “streamlined subsidy schemes”, which seemed to be an area that they were looking for a lot more guidance on. I take the point that there has not been an awful lot of discussion up until now. Do we expect the UK Government to consult on all of those guidelines and secondary legislation or do we not know?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Subsidy Control Bill
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
John Mason
That is helpful. To tidy up with a final point, does the Scottish Government want to have the decision-making power in streamlined subsidy schemes or would it just want to have input into the wider scheme?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
John Mason
I take the point that we do not want there to be too many hoops to jump through. I was on the previous session’s Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee, which felt that Scottish Enterprise and HIE—there were just those two enterprise companies, then—were focused solely on the number of jobs that they could attract, and that things that Michelle Thomson mentioned, such as attracting women, were almost not on their radar. Has there been an attitude change? Do Scottish Enterprise and HIE kind of get it now?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
John Mason
We do not seem to have quite as many co-operatives and so on as some other countries. We can look at the Nordic countries, Denmark and so on. Can we make progress?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
John Mason
I take the point about balance. I suspect that you will give me a similar answer to my next question, which is about self-isolation. We were at 10 days for the self-isolation period and we are now at seven. I think that the United States is at five. How are we getting the balance? What is the thinking about exactly how long the self-isolation period should be?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
John Mason
We heard a lot about vaccination passports, especially in September, when there was a lot of discussion about them, but we have not heard so much about them recently. Is it right that, in the next few weeks, we might make greater use of them? If a vaccination passport is required—I say “vaccination passport”, although I realise that the correct term is “vaccination certificate”—would a negative test also be accepted?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
John Mason
A few weeks ago, the number of people in hospital with Covid was under 500; on Tuesday, the number was 1,479 and, yesterday, it was 1,537. Therefore, the numbers are still rising. That is the key figure that I have been watching day by day. When numbers are still rising, is it not too early to relax some of the restrictions, such as those on huge crowds at football and rugby?
