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
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Thank you. Those are very valuable and insightful responses. However, I am conscious that colleagues want to ask questions, so we might need to keep our remarks a bit sharper.
My final question is about international comparisons. If you work with other countries or you are aware of how other countries are handling the current crisis, I would like to hear from you about what lessons we can learn. I will go to Chris Birt and then to Frazer Scott on that and then pass back to the convener, if that is okay time-wise.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I ask Frazer Scott the same question. Given that children have already been referred to, he might want to focus on single older people.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
My second set of questions relates to wider energy markets and the post-Brexit UK energy market. I should emphasise that energy markets are reserved to the UK Government although, post-Brexit, they remain closely aligned with the European Union energy markets. I put my questions first to Dan Alchin and then Keith Anderson. Can domestic energy market reform happen without wider EU reform? What do you think the EU is likely to do in relation to energy market reform? Will that be accelerated by other resilience issues, such as the security issues in relying on Russian gas and the need for the EU to rapidly embrace renewables? What is your insight on reform and the security of renewables from European countries, including the potential for Scotland to help to provide that impetus?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Energy Price Rises
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I come to Alastair Wilcox.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
We have heard from Phil Prentice about the various funds that are available, and we know from the examples that have just been given that their success is due to a common alignment between different funding streams, whether they be from Historic Environment Scotland, Creative Scotland or the town centre fund. The common theme is that there is a common vision about the story of the place and what needs to be done.
My question for David Grove, though, is about risk aversion. Many council officers involved in towns have to get a return for the council, which might own the properties and might well be under financial pressure and stretched in many different directions. Is there a danger of risk aversion preventing us from making the step change that we need? It all comes down to people; the capital investment might well be available but, in relation to people, what sort of culture and resource do we need? If we are to take communities and, indeed, the business community, artists and so on with us, we need to remember that, although these people are often the most entrepreneurial, they also run businesses and can get exhausted by the time and effort that they have to put in, constant consultations and so on. How do we make that step change to ensure that people embrace entrepreneurialism and become less risk averse?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Very briefly, Danny, given your previous experience in working for the council and with community groups, what do you think are the key elements culturally to enable people to have that trust and, particularly for local authorities, to pass over power and decision making to local communities?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Thank you. Phil, can you comment on the danger of risk aversion and on the benefit of entrepreneurialism in the public sector as well as working with partners in the private sector? Again, we had better focus on successes rather than on where that has not happened. What are your reflections on good practice that we can follow up on, and on practice that we need to try to move away from?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
The Scottish Government has clearly encouraged Creative Scotland to have a more place-based agenda with regard to funding, and Jennifer Hunter has given examples in that respect. How can we enable culture, heritage and a wider arts focus to be taken into account at the start of development, instead of being perceived as “nice to have” at the end of the process? What people resource will be required to get that engine of activity going? After all, freelancers often have to take on other jobs to help with their work, and they need the time to take on such engagements. What is your view on that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Roddy MacDonald, what is the capacity of the voluntary sector and volunteers to be involved in the big projects that we have heard about?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Briefly, for the record, we acknowledge that there is no proposal for any tourism tax in West Lothian and that Linlithgow palace is closed because of unsafe masonry.
On the point about that culture change and the fact that business improvement districts could do more, what would enable them to do more? You talked about their doing bigger projects. However, is there not a risk that, if they do small things, business improvement districts have the challenge of justifying what they are doing? How do we get that trust among all the public sector bodies to empower business improvement districts to do more?
