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
Interests
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Thank you very much, Edward.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I appreciate that you have been in post for only two months, but our committee is about to produce a report and we are nearing the end of this question session, so it would be helpful to know what that mechanism would look like.
Silke Isbrand, do you want to come in, on the invitation of Councillor Macgregor?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
But there is no obvious transparency about that overall impact to make it clear, whether it should be the board’s oversight or indeed the minister’s oversight.
Could I give you an example? We have talked a lot about volume and you have talked effectively, I think, about how you are managing volume. However, clearly, if Registers of Scotland or lawyers make a mistake, it could have consequences. I think that the rejections could be seen as a good thing—as gatekeeping potential problems with what has been presented. However, clearly, the risk of that is greater—you have said this yourself—from a 2017 case than it is from a more recent case, because trying to manage that risk, or to rectify a problem, whether it lies with your organisation or with the supply chain of lawyers providing the applications, is more problematic if you are carrying more older cases. The potential severity of that impact needs to be measured somewhere.
I am not sure that that is transparent either in what you have been saying to us today or in your corporate plan, or indeed in what I have seen in the risk register; it is just service inputs as opposed to risk outputs to the economy. We are the economy committee, so clearly we are interested in that. It may not always be you, and it might be individual lawyers. Between you and your major customer base—lawyers; obviously, you work very closely with the Law Society—how do you manage the risk of things going wrong, as can and does happen? We know that it will not be large cases; it will be small cases, but those cases could have a major impact.
Do you have a duty of care at all and who holds responsibility for any impact on individuals—you will know about mental health issues that we will come to you about—as home owners or indeed businesses? Where does the risk of that impact lie? Where does the accountability lie? Is that with individual lawyers, the Law Society, your board or you as an organisation? There is definitely a risk there, but who is managing that risk and how do we make it more transparent that it is being managed properly?
11:15Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Somebody needs to do that, and that is probably what people are really interested in. Rather than hoping, it would be very helpful if you could consider some kind of collective oversight—you referred to an ecosystem; it is that—to ensure that those risks and that impact are managed.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I would like to ask about your risk register. We understand that it is published every month for your board. We can find a June 2021 risk register, but I would like to ask about the transparency of that for scrutiny purposes and access for this committee and also about how it has informed your corporate plan.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
It is fair to say that a lot of your risk management is on the supply side and is about how you operate as an institution and an organisation, but clearly the importance of Registers of Scotland lies in the fact that it is vital to our economy, to our businesses and to individuals. The impact of the risks that you carry can have quite life-changing effects on people. Who manages that outward-facing risk and why does that not appear in your corporate plan or indeed, from what I have seen, your risk register?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Yes.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Biodiversity Strategy
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Thank you, and sorry about the mistitling. We really want to hear your advice about the freshwater side, in particular.
I move to Calum Duncan.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Biodiversity Strategy
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I ask Craig Macadam to talk about how COP15 can impact on how Scotland delivers on its international obligations.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Biodiversity Strategy
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Fiona Hyslop
We will put Susan Davies on audio only so that we can hear her loud and clear. What is her view on the interaction of COP15 with our consultation and subsequent strategy?
