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 2695 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
Is there any wriggle room that would allow for a phased launch? Different regulations could be considered in different parts of the UK. Is that a possibility, or are we now looking at complete alignment?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
I come back to the issue of unsold consumer goods and goods that might be problematic. In its submission, the SRC talked about the difficulty of recycling mouldy clothes. That feels like a pretty niche issue, but are there other defined categories of consumer goods that can quite easily be described as problematic, so that we can include those in any later guidance?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
We have had a number of submissions that refer to the importance of education and skills development. I want to get your reflections on that. Could something be put into the bill that would help to strengthen the development of that? It is an open question. I can see Cat Hay nodding. Do you want to come in? [Laughter.]
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
Nodding is dangerous.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
Does anyone have any other comments?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
Yes, I have a brief question that was prompted by the question on parliamentary scrutiny. My understanding of the DRS is that the enabling legislation was the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which was followed by a piece of secondary legislation that went through a very lengthy super-affirmative process in Parliament over three or four months in 2019. Were you involved at that stage? Did that process give your industry enough opportunity to contribute its views on how that scheme would look, and how does that relate to this bill and the statutory instruments that might come out of it?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
That is a bit like DRS.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
As the convener said, it would be ideal if we could ask the UK Government our questions. Do you have any sense that DEFRA is putting in place those steps? Is it making substantial progress towards step 1?
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Climate Emergency
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Mark Ruskell
I point Mr Kerr to where investment in our home energy and other energy systems comes from at the moment: it is a mixture of predominantly private finance, personal finance, and investment through mortgages and housing. It will also come through public finance. That is the blend of investment that will deliver the £33 billion. I agree that it is challenging and the Government has to face that challenge, but it will lay out that pathway.
Labour has said that it will not reverse Sunak’s weakening of targets for household heating, should it form the next UK Government. That would condemn another generation to growing up in fuel poverty. I warn Labour about not jumping on to false solutions, such as hydrogen for home heating, in an attempt to surf the waves of uncertainty that have been created by the Tories. Studies have shown that hydrogen would be two to three times more expensive than heat pumps, and it would not be ready for more than a decade. That would worsen fuel poverty and it is one of the reasons why the Scottish Government is focusing the deployment of hydrogen on hard-to-abate industries instead of homes.
