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 2389 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
I recognise that there are different views within the community. Perhaps what unites them is the need for transparency and, at the moment, there is not a clear vision of what a long-term management plan for the village, for the estate and for Glen Lyon will look like. Do you acknowledge that it would benefit both sides of the debate to understand what the estate will achieve in 30, 40 or 50 years’ time?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
It is, convener.
I have been writing a lot of notes this morning and thinking about the various suggestions for amendments and ways in which the bill could be improved. I am wondering where we are with the bill now that we have had several hours of criticism and proposals for some pretty fundamental changes to it. What are your thoughts on the bill? Should the bill as it stands pass? Is it fixable?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
Has the £5,000 sanction in relation to the register of persons holding a controlled interest in land been effective, or is it too early to tell?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
I found those introductory comments on the context very useful. What specifically is missing from the bill? Andy, do you want to answer that first?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
That would be useful.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
Magnus Linklater, does the bill have the correct scope, or is it too broad?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
I am interested in the link between local place plans and the public consultation process in the planning system on one side, and land management plans on the other. Andy Wightman, you have already said that those will be controlled and steered by private interests and that land agents will be involved. Should those two things work together and how would we get them to do so?
I am thinking of the example of Taymouth castle, where the estate would currently not even fall within the provisions for land management plans but where some people in Kenmore and Aberfeldy are concerned that the estate has in effect aggregated a range of assets—some urban and some in the wider estate—and there is a lack of transparency about long-term plans for housing and land management. There is a mixture of issues, some of which might be part of a land management plan if the estate were eligible for that while others would be in the local place plan. I am interested in how, from the community perspective, we join up those two things.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
Is the bill in the same position as the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Bill was in 2005? Does the Government need to reflect on it?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Mark Ruskell
Okay. Peter, will you comment?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 27 November 2024
Mark Ruskell
I am a member of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee that recently scrutinised the regulations that were approved—if very narrowly—by the Parliament.
It is important that bus services, which are public services, are run in the public interest. Franchising is an important part of the public control that is needed, and that is reflected in the 2019 act. As Patrick Harvie has said, the issue is that, in the years since the act was passed, franchising has progressed very rapidly in England, while we have yet to see that kind of progress in Scotland.
Some of the reasons for that are down to the fact that we have not had the legislation in place to enable us to proceed. However, the petitioners also have concerns about whether the decision-making process for a franchise for bus services could be influenced by vested interests.
At the moment, the process that was agreed by the Parliament focuses on the role of the traffic commissioner, who is appointed by the UK Government, not by the Scottish Government. It is the traffic commissioner who appoints the panel that ultimately makes the decision. That is a problem, because one of the traffic commissioner’s stated objectives is to minimise the regulatory burden on operators. If operators who are actively frustrating bus franchising go to court to challenge the bus franchising process, their interests could effectively be represented in a roundabout way through a decision-making panel. That would put the panel in direct opposition to what the 2019 act was trying to achieve, which is to encourage more public control through franchising.
The initial consultation on the act indicated that ministers would make the decisions on franchising, but now, it is the traffic commissioner and a panel that will do that. That requires more examination. The NZET committee has yet to approve the final piece of legislation in the jigsaw that would allow franchising to go forward. This committee could look at the issue again, take evidence from the petitioners and look critically at the issue of a potential conflict of interest between the traffic commissioner and the panel.
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