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 276 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Richard Lochhead
As I said earlier, the potential of hydrogen is enormous for the Scottish economy, and it has a role to play in decarbonising our country. I have spoken to people who think that, if we play our cards right, Scotland could be one of the top three countries in the world in terms of having a decarbonised economy. I hope that that is true, because we have a wealth of resources that could make that happen. However, there are, of course, massive challenges and costs involved in getting there.
The Scottish Government will publish its hydrogen policy in the next few weeks. Clearly, that will give the committee an outline of the direction of travel in relation to realising the potential of hydrogen for Scotland domestically and in terms of export. The initial assessment says that up to 300,000 jobs could be involved. Obviously, the number could go from several tens of thousands up to that level; we will learn over the next few years what the potential is.
With regard to the policies that must be put in place, we have to ensure that people are upskilled and retrained to deal with hydrogen. A lot of work is going on in Scotland in that regard, including in the private sector, where work is being done on the commercial opportunities relating to hydrogen. A month or two ago, I received a presentation from SGN, which is doing some incredible things to investigate and explore what has to be done to re-engineer the infrastructure to take hydrogen, and what that would mean for supply chains, skills and so on.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Richard Lochhead
The Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise, Ivan McKee, spends a lot of time on that issue, and, of course, the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, Michael Matheson, is just back from Japan and Korea, where he spoke to a lot of large businesses that might invest in Scotland. Ministers are doing their best to engage with developing technologies and are taking expert advice. We are publishing relevant policies. As I said, the hydrogen policy will be published in the next few weeks. It will take into account the latest research and information on technologies.
We face a challenge, but we will work with the enterprise companies on the issue. Scotland also has a prestigious university research sector that is helping us.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Richard Lochhead
Thank you for the feedback about what is happening in your constituency. That is an important point to raise.
I know that Patrick Harvie is doing some work on the measures and obstacles that have to be addressed to decarbonise home heating. I am happy to pass on your comments for him to respond either to the committee or directly to you, Mr Beattie. In any case, you have highlighted just one example of the changes that we have to consider as we move forward.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Richard Lochhead
I am, as well. If you go on to Twitter or any other social media, you will see people ruling out certain uses of hydrogen and saying where it should be used. There is a big debate about where it could best be used.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
Richard Lochhead
I am confident that we will make progress in that regard. There is a lot of work to do with the college and university sector, and that work is under way. I was very encouraged by the Fraser of Allander Institute’s report “International Scotland”, which was published in November. I was at the first event that was held on the report to talk about the net zero aspect of it. The report says that Scotland is further ahead than the UK in relation to green education courses, so there are good signs that show that our system is gearing up, but there is a long way to go.
Employers are looking for people, and they tell me that, when young people are looking for work and applying for jobs, they ask them what they are doing to tackle climate change. Employers are waking up to the issue. That is a sign that our young people want to go into the right sectors to play a role in decarbonising Scotland and tackling climate change.
I hope that all those things will come together. I hope that young people will want those jobs, that they will get those jobs and that we will be able to train people for those jobs.
