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 1524 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
We are coming to the end of our inquiry, so it would be helpful if you could do that quite quickly.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
What can and what is the Scottish Government doing to de-risk investments in net zero infrastructure? What barriers are preventing more successful partnerships between councils and private investors? How do you make sure that there are investable opportunities? The criticism that we have is that the propositions are not big enough, so who helps to resolve that situation?
Heat and transport are the big issues that we have to address, but not all heat is in council housing. There is also social housing and private sector housing. How will that be financed and how do we make sure that we have propositions of new finance models to make net zero happen? Is there any role whatsoever for local government in that? Is that what we can expect? Or, in a place-based approach, who will do it? There are big questions around that wider investability and how we leverage in the money. What role do local authorities have and what are you doing to support them? Do they have any responsibility whatsoever for private sector housing in a place-based approach to tackle net zero?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Is that something that you see being addressed by a framework between national and local government?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Is that the way to ensure that finance expertise could be shared? Clearly, small local authorities might not have it yet.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Councillor Macgregor, do you have any views on that in relation to housing and—if we are taking a place-based approach—private housing and transport, which could involve buses as well as electric vehicle charging and so on? If we are going to do this at scale, have you already embarked on a discussion with the Scottish Government on that? How do we get those big mechanisms available for finance at scale? Is that a definite must for the future?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
We are interested in how we leverage in more private finance or support from private business to address that place-based solution for net zero. Silke Isbrand, can you address that issue? We have heard that some councils, such as Glasgow City Council, are already doing a great deal of that. What are the barriers and opportunities for all councils to be able to leverage in private investment? How do we manage that in such a way that councils are not carrying all the risks? That is a concern that we have heard about.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I want to ask about the barriers and opportunities for councils in leveraging private finance. We have heard from councils about the pressures on public finances, and we understand those concerns, but given the scale of the work that we are talking about, they do not expect the Scottish Government to provide all the funding. How, then, do we use private and green finance for this?
Perhaps I can ask Louise Marix Evans to come in not just on that question, but on whether something more can be done about skills, abilities and the framework of collaboration. Do you have any recommendations in that respect?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Convener
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Agenda item 2 is appointment of the committee’s new convener. On 15 June 2021, the Parliament agreed motion S6M-00393, which resolved that members of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party were eligible to be chosen as convener of this committee. I understand that the Conservative nominee for convener is Edward Mountain.
Edward Mountain was chosen as convener.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Convener
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Congratulations, Edward. I pass over to you to convene the remainder of the meeting.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
David Hammond, you talked about there being a lot of collaboration already between officials. Do you think that anything else is needed to provide that co-production mechanism? We all agree that everyone needs to be involved—local government, national Government, the private sector and so on—but should that be done on a place basis? Is there a role for city deals? How do we put the approach into practice?
