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 1621 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Please share.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Just because it is complicated and hard, that does not mean that we do not look at it and see what we can do, as it might well be the right thing to do.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Perhaps I can bring in Dermot Rhatigan for an additional comment on timber. Dermot, can you also talk about cement and how realistic the approach is in that respect? If we can crack the issue of cement in an environmental impact sense, it will give us a dual hit with regard to local supply—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
That is why the Government can have a role. We are interested in what it is doing and there is clearly potential for it to address the matter through building regulations. We want assurance that you are not just being passive in the matter but that the Government is taking an active role.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
To what extent has there been a step change for engineering companies because of the continuing crisis that we face as a result of, for instance, Brexit? We got quite a blunt view from the chair of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland that, over decades, Scotland had lost key manufacturing and engineering skills. Therefore, if we are trying to build resilience and areas for growth, not least in renewable energy, we need to undertake quite a lot of development.
Looking at NMIS’s work on low carbon, to what extent has there been a shift of the dial through its impact on the number of companies that it is working with? How do we tackle that manufacturing and engineering challenge? It is clear that centralisation across the UK and internationally has meant that we do not do as much of that kind of work as we would have done previously. We cannot micromanage everything, but to what extent does that mean helping such companies to develop?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
We hear from the engineering sector in particular that businesses might not get contracts for five years, but they must start building capacity now. Therefore, the issue is what, if anything, the public sector can do—I am thinking of something like a bridging development—to enable them to build up capacity and skills in their companies, so that they are ready to get their share of the contracts. Some of the contracts will come sooner but, as some of them might not come for some time, the public sector has a role in building resilience—otherwise, we will not have the supply chain that we want.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Who leads on that? Is it you or Michael Matheson?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I have lots of questions—I am sorry, convener. I will come to all the witnesses, but will ask Martin Johnson a question first.
The committee is conducting the inquiry so that we can inform our view on the forthcoming connectivity plans, so I will focus on future thinking. We want sustainable economic growth and repopulation, and we want to deliver net zero. That is the frame. I see that the witnesses are all nodding at that, which is helpful.
I will ask about specific links and areas, but first I have a question for Martin Johnson. What involvement has Highlands and Islands Enterprise had in the development of the forthcoming connectivity plan?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I will switch to the Ullapool-Stornoway route and freight businesses on it. What would success in the future look like for them in terms of the criteria that we have mentioned?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I take it that you want to make sure that the routes are attractive to the new workforce that will be needed for the new industries?
