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 2121 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator
Meeting date: 6 June 2024
Bob Doris
The reason why I asked is that OSCR is one of the regulators of housing associations. When I meet housing association chairs and board members, I always ask them whether they challenge the senior management of those associations in a positive way. That is a constructive aspect. Thank you for putting that on the record.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator
Meeting date: 6 June 2024
Bob Doris
Good morning. I am not sure whether I have to declare this but, for transparency, I say that I am a trustee of a small charity called Spirit of Springburn. I have no financial gain from that. My interest is registered under the voluntary category, and I declare it at this point.
Clearly, a significant amount of work will be needed to implement the Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Act 2023, and I suppose that that means that there is no business as usual—things have to change and there is an impact on resource. Will one of you give an example of how you have had to change from business as usual to doing something different that will allow you to implement the 2023 act?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator
Meeting date: 6 June 2024
Bob Doris
That is a helpful and specific example of the impact. I have a follow-up question. What has been the impact on casework? I imagine that the casework teams are left to deal with the same number—or perhaps a greater number—of inquiries with fewer staff.
Before you answer that—because we are time sensitive today—if there are other examples of where there has been an impact, will you put those on the record as well? I will move on to my next question at that point.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Transport Policies and Performance
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Bob Doris
That is helpful, cabinet secretary.
I want to move on to the new train procurement programme and the plans to decarbonise the network by 2035. Before I do so, I declare an interest. I am delighted to say that Gibson’s Engineering Ltd has bought the previously closed Caley rail works at St Rollox, in my constituency. It hopes to employ thousands of workers there in the years ahead, should it be successful in growing the business. I have every confidence that it can do so.
My questions are in relation to procurement—I do not wish to ask questions about any individual company that is part of any process—but I wanted to put that on the record for transparency purposes. My understanding is that the new train procurement programme was put on the Public Contracts Scotland website in 2022, looking for expressions of interest. The ambition is to have 675 new carriages, with 65 per cent of the fleet being replaced.
What I am not sure about is how our committee can track—no pun intended, cabinet secretary—against benchmarks along the way to see where the Scottish Government is in that process, so that we can carry out our scrutiny role.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Transport Policies and Performance
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Bob Doris
That is helpful, cabinet secretary. I acknowledge that ScotRail is a well-performing and well-run railway, but clearly we still want to drive improvements where we can. The committee would welcome correspondence from you, following that meeting, to update us on what work is being done to address the matters that you have just put on the record. That would be quite helpful.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Transport Policies and Performance
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Bob Doris
There is no question for you to answer, cabinet secretary; I am simply asking you to do something. Mr Simpson mentioned ticketing and the fact that people do not always get the split fare pricing that allows them to get the best deal for tickets. Trainline takes less than a minute to use, and it allows you to add on discount cards. For example, I have a Club 50 railcard, because I am now over 50, which enables me to get a significant discount on rail travel.
When you have those discussions with ScotRail, will you make sure that the technology that it uses—the machines in the stations and so on—allows travellers to access, and promotes, the various discount cards that are available for ScotRail? We are trying to increase revenue, and that is a good way of getting more people to travel.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Transport Policies and Performance
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Bob Doris
There is certainly no such benefit, convener, although I hope that there will be for my constituents, if they get jobs in the years ahead.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Transport Policies and Performance
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Bob Doris
Cabinet secretary, if Mr Fairlie is leading on canals, I hope that you can suggest to him that we look at the wider regeneration impact on communities. In my constituency, there is regeneration at the Hamiltonhill Claypits, impressive investment is being made in Maryhill, Gilshochill and the Stockingfield bridge, and a new nature reserve has been developed towards Cadder, beside the banks of the canal. Does the cabinet secretary agree that using canals as drivers of community regeneration, particularly in deprived areas, is important and that, when we audit Scottish canals, we should audit their social benefit as well as the pounds and pence elsewhere?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Transport Policies and Performance
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Bob Doris
Absolutely.
I do not know whether the next question is related, but in preparation for today’s meeting, I was looking at the papers and saw that, some six years ago, the UK Government started talking about radical reform of the rail system across the UK. In 2021, the Williams-Shapps report was published, and eventually, in February 2024, the UK Government introduced a Rail Reform Bill that, from what I can see, would protect many of the devolved aspects of the rail industry.
However, there has been a lot of delay in relation to that bill, and now that the UK election has been called, we will have to wait to see what an incoming Government does. Has there been any impact on the Scottish Government and its planning arrangements in relation to Scotland’s railway, now that we are six years down the line from what was marketed as radical reform of the rail network?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Transport Policies and Performance
Meeting date: 4 June 2024
Bob Doris
I have a question about the performance of ScotRail. The most recent performance data that we have shows a public performance measure figure of 91.3 per cent, but the target is 92.5 per cent. Therefore, although performance is pretty good, it is not quite there. How can we drive improvement in ScotRail’s performance? In March this year, ScotRail had to pay out £1.5 million because of delays and cancellations, but £1 million of that was not to do with anything that ScotRail had done; rather, it related to issues with Network Rail.
ScotRail has reached a performance level of 91.3 per cent. Admittedly, that is not the target, but its failure to meet the target is down to Network Rail rather than to ScotRail. How do we drive an improvement in performance? How can we report on the data in such a way that we can work out which organisation needs to up its game to do even better?
