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 2999 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
In your working group in COSLA, is there political unanimity behind having a more consistent approach to targets? There are all these issues around how best to deliver targets in different-sized local authorities and so on, but is there political unanimity in your working group around having more consistency in how targets are set and planned for?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Thank you.
David Hammond, when it comes to council officers, is there a need for more of a framework around how plans are developed to tackle climate change and how targets are set?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Does George Tarvit want to add anything?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
To pick up on that last point, we are aware—and we had some evidence on this from the previous panel of witnesses—that there is a lot of inconsistency among local authorities. The majority of them do not have area-wide targets, although the majority do have targets for their own emissions. What are your organisations doing to develop a more coherent approach across local authorities, in order to achieve a common understanding of net zero and how targets should be applied? That question goes first to Gail Macgregor to answer from a COSLA perspective.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Role of Local Government in Delivering Net Zero
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
You are saying that such bottom-up collaboration will help to build consistency.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Absolutely—and I have been a CPG convener in the past. I have resisted taking on too many CPGs, both as a member and in any kind of convening role, but I feel that this group represents a genuine space where there is interest and enthusiasm for the topics that will be covered. I am prepared, and my office is prepared, to work with the secretariat and make the group a success.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Thank you very much, convener.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Yes. The subject is the nature and climate emergencies. There has been a lot of discussion among members, particularly in the previous parliamentary session, about the interrelationship between those emergencies, how the climate crisis is affecting nature and how some of the solutions to mitigate climate change can come from nature—for example, blue carbon and peatland restoration. It is about bringing together conversations involving people who work in different subject committees across the Parliament and in different spaces.
From discussion with non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders, we thought that creating a CPG space in which we could explore some of the interrelationships between the climate emergency and the nature emergency would make sense. We had initial informal meetings to discuss the way forward, and that brought good cross-party interest. That interest has continued into this session, including among members who now sit on the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee and the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee in Parliament.
I think that it will be a good cross-party group. I have been a convener of previous cross-party groups and a member of this committee, and I recognise that a lot of cross-party groups are currently in operation. We will be looking at topics that interest a wide variety of members and also at the agendas of other cross-party groups to see whether joint meetings on areas of mutual interest are possible.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Yes.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
We have not reached out on the detail of the work programmes of each CPG. We are aware of their interests but, to be honest, the nature and climate emergencies are a very specific area. Although, for example, the cross-party group on crofting might be interested in the impact of climate change, it would not cover that and the nature emergency as specific topics.
Members of the proposed group would be open to exploring opportunities for joint meetings and cross-over, but I do not see anything in the remit of the other groups that is explicitly on the topic of the nature and climate emergencies.
