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 1926 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Bob Doris
We can roll them together due to time constraints, convener.
My question is on whether the data on fly-tipping is robust. In my experience, there is almost hidden fly-tipping. Local authorities across the country have bulk uplift charges, which can be prohibitive at times, so local residents often put their household waste—such as old baths, cookers and televisions—beside communal bin areas, but those are not covered by the local authority’s uplift policy. That is eventually deemed to be fly-tipping and is collected at a cost to the council. Is that captured in the data? Scottish Government stats refer to 60,000 annual incidents. Is that an underestimate? Do we have a clear definition of what fly-tipping is?
I know that there are time constraints, convener, but it is important to ask that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Bob Doris
I think that Rhona Gunn did address it. In many urban areas, there is a prevalence of people putting household goods for disposal at bin locations, when those goods are not covered by local authority uplift. I understand that the waste sits there for some time and is then classified as fly-tipping, and is uplifted at a cost to the local authority anyway.
We need to standardise data collection across the country to see the extent of the problem and, as Rhona Gunn said, find more efficient ways of tackling that issue. I think that Rhona agreed that it is an issue, but that we do not have robust data collection.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Bob Doris
Yes. I thank Mr Ruskell for letting me come in at this point. I have a specific constituency question for Mr McCulloch, as he might have anticipated. I was pleased that the Scottish Government provided £21 million of RIF funding to allow Glasgow City Council to carry out a much needed overhaul of its recycling facilities—it has probably been waiting a decade for that investment. I hope that that will bring about a transformation, but I am obviously keen to know when the Blochairn recycling facility, which is a significant blight for many of my constituents, will finally close and more appropriate facilities will be used. It would be helpful to know that. Is that £21 million investment sufficient to allow Glasgow City Council to be on track to dramatically improve the current recycling rates? What percentage do you think that you will get to over the next few years, once the new facilities and the new kerbside collections are in place?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
Can I follow up on that briefly?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
Before I move on to Professor Macdonald, I have a short follow-up question to Lucy Kenyon’s reply.
I have no reason to doubt anything that you have said, Lucy, but, if the day job of the HSE is to look at emerging evidence and patterns in work-related deaths, injuries and ill health, are we legislating to fix the inadequacies of the HSE, or are we legislating to complement an existing mechanism? I will ask Lucy to respond to that, and then, Professor Macdonald, you can answer both of those questions. That would be really helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
Thank you very much, professor. That was very brief.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
That is fine; of course. People often say that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
That is really helpful.
Professor Macdonald, to remind you, the question is about whether the bill might create duplication and whether the Health and Safety Executive has a primary role in properly delivering on work-related deaths, injuries and ill health that might also be covered by the bill.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
If we have time constraints, I will bring Lucy Kenyon in, if she wants to say something. I can always follow up with the professor later.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Bob Doris
This session has been helpful. The picture that is emerging shows that, although structures are in place in the Health and Safety Executive, as Lucy Kenyon mentioned, they may not be sufficient for the ambitions that Professor Macdonald has regarding the data that we should be collecting, for example. There are systems in place, but there appears to be a weakness regarding the jobs that they should be doing. The question is whether the bill is the way to plug that gap, or whether there are other ways to do so. That is something that we have to wrestle with as a committee.
What the bill is silent about—for some, it is the elephant in the room—is whether the new SEIAC will, at some point, make recommendations on who should get industrial injuries benefits when the criteria for that are looked at again by the Scottish Government, or whether another body should do that.
My question is about the different approach that SEIAC might take in relation to those kinds of things compared with IIAC, which is, of course, looking at the same evidence and has the same experts deciding whether there is “reasonable certainty”, which is a very general expression. I suppose that that is a long way of asking whether you think that SEIAC would necessarily take a different approach to IIAC when making decisions. I am not talking about data collection, Professor Macdonald—we are admitting that there is a gap in that—I am being more general. If SEIAC and IIAC are looking at the same data, would you expect them to come to different conclusions as to whether there was reasonable certainty?
