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 1502 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
Good morning. Kim Pratt, you have gone straight in to talking about targets, which I wanted to ask about, but we have already heard about the link between the strategy and the targets and what those might be, so I might come back to you.
Phoebe Cochrane, perhaps you can go first to say a bit more about what circular economy targets you would like to be introduced and whether you are satisfied with the framework that the bill provides for setting those targets. The committee is also interested to hear any relevant international examples of consumption-based targets.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
That is really helpful. I will come back to Kim Pratt and ask Michael Cook to respond next.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
Thank you. If there is a perception that, in the waste hierarchy—to use your words—“re-use is a second-class citizen” compared with recycling, are you nervous that the opportunity to redress that balance in the bill might be missed? There is a lot of discussion about the recycling part of the bill, so are you nervous that re-use is not given the prominence that it perhaps needs?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
I will try to get through the next couple of questions quickly, but that was really helpful. Kim Pratt, I will come to you. If you have anything to briefly add to that first discussion, please do, but are you satisfied that you will have the opportunity to engage in the detail of target setting and the scrutiny of proposals via secondary legislation? The bill sets out what that process might be.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
If there are no other views on that point, I will ask one more question.
The bill provides that the Scottish ministers “may” set targets. Are our panel satisfied that that goes far enough? In the context of the climate and nature emergency, what should be the timeframe for setting the targets, and should that also be reflected in the bill? Kim, do you want to go first?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
Thank you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
Thank you. Does anyone else want to comment?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
Yes. Good morning, minister and colleagues. Convener, you have touched on some of the questions that I had about the work that is being done to survey the streets and see which ones should be exempt. I think that Fred O’Hara said that £2.4 million in funding has already been allocated to local government. It would be good to get more detail, after today’s session, of how that money has been used over the past two years to resource this exercise and to get an update on which streets, if any, will be exempt.
I also have a question on the attitude to enforcement. I appreciate that it is for the local authorities to carry out enforcement, but I wonder whether the minister has a view on the approach that should be taken. We know what the procedures are. Some might call them intelligence led, but sometimes there is a lot of discretion, which leads to a lot of variation. For example, my office has been asked to look at enforcement around engine idling. We did some freedom of information requests on that and found that most local authorities take a non-enforcement approach to engine idling and try to identify teachable moments to educate on it. Does the minister anticipate that councils will take a similar approach to pavement parking, or will there be a more robust approach?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Monica Lennon
It is not a contribution but, given the nature of what has just been discussed, I refer to my entry in the register of interests, under the voluntary section, as I am a patron of Disability Equality Scotland. I want to be transparent about that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Monica Lennon
Good morning, minister and officials. I have a brief question. Can you clarify what role energy from waste facilities will have in meeting the important targets that have been set?
