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
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
You are happy with the 3,000 hectares threshold.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
Okay—there is no fixed date, but there is a kind of work plan.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
I understand that, and I presume that the right to appeal will be with the regulator, if there is an environmental issue. I am interested in a situation in which there might be a very localised case—it might be the only case in Scotland—of a pollution incident, for example. There might not be a way to adequately seek justice in that case and the case might point to the need for a change in the law, or for the regulatory body to regulate in a different way from how it currently discharges its duties. ESS might have gone through the complaints process with the regulatory body and not got anywhere, so it might think that it could look at whether the body is regulating effectively and whether there needs to be a change in the law. Is that not a difficult decision for ESS to make right now? It would still just be one case. Where is the discretion in that?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
Do you want that to be in the bill or are you happy for it to be in guidance and to assume that the Government will make the right decision?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
Do Andrew Thin and Gary Campbell want to comment on the threshold issue? What would be an adequate threshold for land management plans?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
One aspect of Aarhus compliance involves the ability of citizens to challenge not only a decision-making procedure that they believe was inadequate, but the merit of the decision. That is something that we do not really have. The convention talks about
“the substantive and procedural legality”
of environmental decisions. At the moment—this is the case with fracking and some other environmental issues—environmental non-governmental organisations can take bodies to court when they believe that they have not followed an adequate procedure, but they cannot challenge the substance of the decision. For example, they cannot say that a decision is not great in relation to our legal obligations around climate change. As long as the procedure that a minister or a body goes through to get to that decision is procedurally correct, there is no issue for the courts to consider.
Where does the Government sit on that issue? It would be quite a move to enable people to challenge a decision based on the merits of the decision, and not just on the procedure. I would be interested to hear your views on that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
I know that we are discussing licensing this morning, but I will bring my question down to a specific issue. Do you think that the Supreme Court’s recent decision on Rosebank starts to move into the area of concern about the merit of a particular decision rather than the procedural aspect of it?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
You have suggested that the Government could have concerns about the establishment of an environmental court, because it could be disruptive—I think that that is what you said—to actions that we need to take in relation to delivering net zero by 2045. I suppose that Mr Lumsden might want to take the Government to court over its decisions on pylon lines or whatever.
Could you expand on that issue? What is the underlying concern? Is it about environmental NGOs possibly challenging offshore wind farms, such as the Berwick Bank project, about which there is concern at the moment? There have been concerns about other such projects in the past. Is the Government hesitating on the issues because there is fear that some of the tensions around environmental mitigation and impact could result in lengthy delays to some of the good stuff that it needs to do around net zero?
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how it will ensure that all appropriate roads have a safer speed limit of 20mph by 2025. (S6O-04074)
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
It is clear that every council in Scotland is ready to roll out 20mph, which is remarkable. That means that, by the end of next year, every child in every community could be living on a safer street. Local implementation, alongside a national programme, will help to drive forward the national road safety messages that have been so successful in driving down casualty rates in Wales. However, when I speak to councils and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, there is uncertainty about what funds will be available to get the job done in the next 12 months, particularly in relation to staff resources in councils. How will the budget that was announced yesterday enable each and every one of those 32 councils to deliver implementation plans in the next year, as it is clear that that will cost more than £4 million?
