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 5835 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Devolving Scotland
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
You are bringing in an element of belonging, in a way.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Devolving Scotland
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
I was interested to hear from Jackie Weaver, when she came to our session a few weeks ago, that community councils in England are incorporated and they have revenue-raising powers, which ours do not. That takes me back to the conversation about remuneration. How do we engage more people? What would be the incentive for people to come to a community council?
It seems to me that having some power to do something could attract thoughtful people who want to participate in shaping the place to which they belong and with which they identify. The same remuneration piece applies at the council level. We would attract people who have the right skill sets. We already attract such people, but they take a massive cut and struggle financially. As you said, they tend to do one term and then have to move on. That is a shame, because the tremendous amount of experience that they have gained over the five-year period goes out the door again.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Devolving Scotland
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
Yes, something definitely needs to be done. The Scottish local authority remuneration committee is busy reviewing the remuneration piece too, so hopefully we will see some progress on that. As you said, someone who is responsible for the city of Edinburgh, for example, is considered to be part-time and is paid as such. That is concerning.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Devolving Scotland
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
So there could be gradual reform rather than everything being ripped up.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Devolving Scotland
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
The Scottish Land Commission recently published a report, which you may have seen, about forms of tax on land. It did not necessarily suggest a land value tax, but it had different kinds of ideas on tax on land.
One of the things that was flagged up to me was the fact that, in Fife, Amazon has its regional delivery centre, where its stuff gets sent out not only around Scotland but to the north of England. Amazon pays, I think, £1 million in non-domestic rates, and the neighbouring Tesco pays £2 million. Amazon generates tremendous income but is not really paying for it. I am interested in exploring those things, and, as a committee, we will look at that issue and how to generate more income for local authorities. Have you looked at that?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Devolving Scotland
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for that. It is really helpful.
It has been a really useful session, and we could go on a bit longer—I have certainly got more questions—but I have put a big box around my note “How local is local?”. Perhaps that is another part of the conversation if we want to take a more local approach, be that through 19 or 32 local authorities. That might have been discussed in some of the reports of the 2002 or 2014 local government committees, which you have referred to. It seems to be another piece of the conversation about what we want to devolve to more local levels, and that is important as we face a climate and nature emergency. Communities will face very different sets of issues—flooding, wildfires or whatever—and a pandemic-level speed of response to those issues will be needed. What is the local level at which power is needed in order to do that quickly?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
First, I want to continue with Christine Grahame’s line of questioning, as I am interested in getting a little bit more detail as to why you chose to use the phrase “have regard to” instead of something stronger like “must comply with” in relation to the code of practice. Secondly, what kind of evidence would a licence holder need to present to show that they had had regard to the code of practice? Finally, how do you think compliance with the code of practice will be monitored?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
Okay. Thanks.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
I am interested in the key issues that the Scottish Government needs to come to a view on to make a decision about extending SSPCA powers. Is the Scottish Government working with Police Scotland to consider that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 31 May 2023
Ariane Burgess
I have a couple of questions about the thinking around the payments. One is about supporting farmers who are already growing or want to grow more fruit and vegetables or plant protein. As you know, horticulture uses less land and supports many more livelihoods in rural areas. I am interested in hearing what your thinking is about supporting more people to grow food in Scotland.
