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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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
The first continued petition is PE1864, lodged by Aileen Jackson on behalf of Scotland Against Spin, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to increase the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore wind farms by adopting English planning legislation for the determination of onshore wind farm developments, empowering local authorities to ensure that local communities are given sufficient professional help to engage in the planning process and appointing an independent advocate to ensure that local participants are not bullied and intimidated during public inquiries.
We last considered the petition on 29 June last year, when we agreed to explore a number of the issues by writing to the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, UK Government ministers, Planning Aid Scotland and the Scottish Government’s planning and environmental appeals division—DPEA. We have now received responses from all of those bodies.
The DPEA sets out the training and advice provided to reporters when conducting public inquiries. It notes:
“Reporters are advised to be alert to any overstepping of the mark and to intervene if they perceive that cross-examination is becoming overbearing”.
Planning Aid Scotland says that all its staff and volunteers are required to be chartered planners. Although it has not recently provided training relating to public inquiries, it says that it will continue to monitor the type of advice requests that it receives and use the information to inform the training that is provided to its staff and volunteers. PAS would welcome the Scottish Government undertaking research into how support could be provided for communities that participate in public inquiries.
Following the evidence session with the minister, the committee received clarification that the Scottish Government has powers to alter the 50MW threshold for renewable energy developments but has not explored the benefits or disadvantages of doing so.
Although the Secretary of State for Scotland and the UK Minister for Energy and Climate declined to comment on the specifics of the petition, they indicated the UK Government’s willingness to engage constructively with the Scottish Government on planning matters.
We have also received two new submissions from Aileen Jackson, the petitioner, commenting on the responses received. She welcomes the minister’s clarification on the Scottish Government’s power to alter the 50MW threshold—I think that Mr Ewing raised that matter in examination. Aileen considers that that potentially opens the possibility for more decisions on proposed wind farm developments to be taken at a local authority level. She also highlights the UK Government proposals for changes in national planning policy on onshore wind farm developments in England. That is coupled with the United Kingdom Government’s willingness to work with the Scottish Government on these matters.
We have had a lot of constructive feedback from the various bodies to which we wrote. On the basis of that feedback, do colleagues want to suggest ways in which we might take things forward?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Yes—that is quite a nice marriage of the different suggestions that have been made. It makes clear that, although we feel the technical need to close the petition, we have not lost sight of the underlying issues and are almost encouraging it to be brought back to us, should the shortcomings prevail. Are we content to proceed on that basis?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
I suppose that we might also usefully ask the industry for information. I am not quite sure whether the petition is arising out of an industry concern or whether it sits outside of an industry concern—for all I know, the concern might not exist in the industry in Scotland at all.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
That is my thought, too. We could write to the NFUS.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
I accept that, but I am mindful of the petitioner here, and I wonder whether, in the first instance, we want to focus specifically on the position in NHS Grampian in our inquiry to the minister.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Just to be clear, what would that involve us doing?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Do members agree to take the action as discussed?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
From our liberal consumption of the milk of human life, we come to the end of our consideration of new petitions.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Are there any other suggestions or comments from colleagues?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Jackson Carlaw
Colleagues, I am obviously sympathetic to the representations that we have received from Mr Choudhury. Could we couple that suggested action with a notice to the petitioner, drawing their attention to the actions that the Scottish Government has indicated are being taken, but pointing out to them that they can bring back the petition in a year’s time if they feel that the provisions that the Government has said are about to be fulfilled by local authorities and Water Safety Scotland have failed to address the issues? I do not know whether there is much more that we can do at this stage, but we could draw to the petitioner’s attention that there is that route to take.
