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: 22 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
You are breaking up slightly, but carry on.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Is Skills Development Scotland working with the Scottish Funding Council to feed into Government where you see potential bottlenecks? You talked about more than £1 billion of investment in the wider education aspect, and, on top of that, there is other green funding, green investment and net zero funding from the Government. Are the bottlenecks that you describe, which we heard about from the earlier panel, an area in which we might get best value? If we want to enable things to happen, should we look at planning and other areas in local authorities to enable that net zero agenda to be fully realised?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
You mentioned city deals and alluded to what has happened as a result of the Tay cities deal. Do you think that, because that deal was one of the later ones, it perhaps has more of a focus on delivering net zero skills than some of the earlier city region deals?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Good morning. Thank you all for joining us.
Robbie, you mentioned the draft national planning framework 4, which will place a number of new net zero-related commitments on developers and planning authorities. I am interested to find out whether you think that the profession is prepared for such changes and what you think needs to happen. What should planners be doing to help to deliver net zero?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Thank you very much indeed.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Thank you. Is there more of a challenge for rural local authorities in the agenda of embedding climate change skills, upskilling, reskilling or whatever right across all aspects of local authority delivery?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Thank you, Jamie. I will move on to my question for Chris Brodie. Skills planning clearly focuses on the anticipated needs of industry to deliver green jobs, but we are focusing on local authorities and the transition to a net zero society. What modelling have you done in relation to local authorities that are major employers, apart from anything else, and are, as we know, key to the delivery of net zero? What assessment have you made of local authorities’ staffing and professional needs for the transition?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Simon, you talked about the need to scale up net zero skills and training as happened when we had the big expansion of early years educators, and I would like to hear more about that.
We have also heard that supply and demand are very locally planned. Colleges are very well placed to do that, and they are very adaptable and flexible in that respect. For example, West Lothian College in my area is, with funding from the Scottish Government and councils in West Lothian, working with private builders on building a traditional house for retrofitting and a Passivhaus in order to provide skills and retraining. Is that sort of thing happening in all colleges, and what more can be done to make sure that that agenda is properly seized?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
Good morning. You have already talked about the importance of the bank not crowding out private finance, and the fact that the role of the bank is to invest where the private sector is failing to provide sufficient finance. How can the bank ensure that it is investing in a company or project that would not get private investment? Can you give us an indication of where there is greater appetite from the private sector to invest and where there is less appetite? Within your Venn diagram, are there areas that you might look to target?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Fiona Hyslop
I know that it is early days, but is there any evidence that the bank is attracting domestic and international private investment into Scotland? By its sheer existence, a development bank can provide a mission-led focus. Obviously, the bank is attracting interest but does it give outside investors confidence that there is something interesting going on in Scotland that they want to be part of?
