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
Air Quality
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
You indicated that you were aware of the evidence that the committee has had previously. One of the messages that we were getting is that, because we know that poor air quality probably has an impact at a much lower level than the current standards, it is more important to have an agenda of continuous improvement than to focus on standards affecting some hotspots in some areas. Is that something that you have a view on now?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Air Quality
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
I have a question just to understand your role as well. There are some standards for which it is easier to see where the Scottish Government is complying and so on. How would ESS monitor a continuous improvement agenda to show progress?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Air Quality
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Apologies for straying on to a colleague’s area of questioning, but I was more interested in the five-year review and how that sits with a continuous improvement agenda, which everybody seems to recognise we need to have. Does that relate to your point about there being certain things that we would need to assess more regularly than every five years? That is more of a policy agenda? We know that we need standards. However, we do not want compliance with standards to get in the way of what seems to be a wider continuous improvement agenda that can be monitored and assessed more regularly. Is that your view?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Air Quality
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Do you have a view on the Scottish Government’s support for local authorities that have been failing to meet their objectives under local air quality management systems? Is there any evidence of improvement in the support that is being provided?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Air Quality
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
On timescales for improvement, your view is that a five-year review cycle is not consistent with trying to get compliance as soon as possible. Are you satisfied with the Government’s response on that?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Air Quality
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
To put the issue in context, I note that, if we use that timescale, a child who starts primary 1 aged five will almost have left primary school by the time of the review. I am not saying anything about a particular school but, conceptually, in relation to improvements, five years is quite a long time in the life of a child.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Air Quality
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Which is why we are having this inquiry session.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Good morning. In your initial feedback to the Scottish Government, you highlighted the importance of ensuring the accessibility of the just transition plans in order to allow non-specialists to engage with them. Can you expand on that feedback and say what needs to be done to improve the accessibility of current drafts? Will you also reflect on the purpose of and the audience for the just transition plans, because that will influence how they are written and the language that they are written in? Is the process of producing the just transition plans as important as the final publication?
I ask Jim Skea to give his overall view on that and then, if Elliot Ross or Lang Banks want to come in, they should let us know.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Elliott, do you want to come in?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Fiona Hyslop
So you want it to be accessible but at the same time your initial feedback was that you want more detail and credibility, particularly for the energy sector just transition plan. You have recently responded on—we have heard about this today—the need for more information on fuel poverty, ownership of community assets, investment and so on.
10:30The committee is making recommendations and is having an open dialogue with you about your scrutiny and advice role. The challenge is that there is a tendency for the Government put everything but the kitchen sink into a document and to try to capture what we already know, whereas we really want the just transition plan to capture what has to be done differently and in what areas. Would you like to comment on that?
