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 1396 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
Tolerance. That is the word that you used, wisely.
A common theme that we have heard from a number of people who have given evidence to us recently is that the political arena needs to create the space and have the maturity and tolerance to enable the change that needs to happen. Do you want to say anything more about that? It is a responsibility that we and our colleagues need to share and about which we need to be serious.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
Thank you for sharing that inspirational story, Mr Hutton. To follow on from what you said, it is important to emphasise that, although Pauline Walker and you have stated that interventions, alternatives and innovative programmes are expensive, we must keep in mind what they create in respect of young people contributing to society and what they save in respect of the Christie principles and potentially in respect of other services.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
The review mentions other recently published reviews of education and skills, and you have spoken about your engagement with Professor Hayward. How can the Scottish Government best oversee this period of reform? How quickly can we move forward? In your opening answer, you talked about being glad that some time is being taken to consider implementation but said that there should a balance.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
You talked about momentum earlier. Should there be momentum for pressing on and making progress on change and implementation in relation to the common themes that are shared between the reviews?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
That is when they flourish. I have seen that many times.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
Exactly. Do you want to respond, Peter?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
I should clarify that I was not arguing against that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
Good morning. I welcome the fact that the regulations are being put in place to implement these important aspects in the 2019 act.
Quite understandably, during the process of the 2019 act, the needs of businesses for deliveries and unloading were considered, and exemptions were made in section 55(6) to allow pavement parking in reasonable circumstances as long as there is a gap of 1.5m at the edge of the pavement and the parking does not take place for more than 20 minutes. Unfortunately, in my constituency and others in urban Scotland, deliveries take place in an unreasonable way, which means that there is not adequate space left at the side, and delivery vehicles are parked for longer than 20 minutes.
We do not want to punish people; we want to change attitudes and practices—as the minister said—so, as part of the delivery of the enforcement of the regulations, as well as a public marketing campaign, will there be significant engagement with businesses, organisations, the large supermarkets and the prominent delivery companies—of which there is a long list—such as Parcelforce, DPD and UPS? It will be important to inform the drivers that change is coming.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
We could talk about that particular point a lot more, but I think we should move on, convener.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
I have a small question. You have made some impactful points, Mr Cook, but is accessibility of facilities not also important? A council recycling site can sometimes be reached only in a motor vehicle. As we consider the process, do we need to think harder and more imaginatively about having reuse facilities in the high streets of towns and cities in Scotland?
For example, the Edinburgh Remakery, in my Edinburgh Northern and Leith constituency, is doing remarkable work with laptops. However, if an iron, for example, broke, I would not—nor, I think, would my constituents—have any idea where to take it to get it repaired, rather than buy a new one. That is just one of many possible examples. Could the charity shop network provide innovative possibilities, given that it has retail units that are already in prominent locations?
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