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 164 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Liam McArthur
Thank you, convener, and thank you for inviting me to participate in the committee’s discussions. I put on record my gratitude to your predecessor and to the predecessor committee for the work that they did on the petition, which was pretty forensic. As you have outlined, they did some fairly detailed work, which included holding a number of oral evidence sessions. Those were very helpful, not necessarily in getting to the conclusion that I was looking for, but in exposing some of the fundamental issues that are involved in the project.
I urge the committee to keep the petition open. I think that HIAL’s management have been unwilling to accept the deep concerns that exist across all the communities that are served by the air traffic services that are to be centralised in Inverness. Those concerns extend across the political spectrum and to people who have no political affiliation at all.
There is no question but that modernisation of air traffic services is needed—that is not contested at all. What is fiercely contested is that the remote tower model is the only viable model that will achieve that modernisation and meet the current regulatory requirements and those that are coming down the track.
Since the predecessor committee took evidence, the most substantive development has been the publication of the delayed island impact assessment. Certainly in the Orkney context, it identified no positive benefits and a range of significant negative impacts of the centralisation proposals. Therefore, there is a feeling in the community that I represent that, if the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 and the island-proofing concept are to mean anything, simply setting aside that island impact assessment is not a sustainable position.
In response to written questions, ministers have confirmed that they have had no engagement with HIAL’s management on the outcome of the island impact assessment, which seems wholly unjustified and unsatisfactory. At the very least, I hope that the committee agrees that that needs to be addressed.
The other point to reinforce is that the proposals predate the pandemic and the impact on air services generally. There is a real concern that the commitment of hundreds of millions of pounds of public money to the rolling out of the programme will be compounded by further investment before proper due diligence and audit is conducted on that expenditure. We can all draw on examples of when that process has led to fairly unpleasant and regrettable outcomes in other areas of public expenditure. I hope that the committee agrees that the audit process needs to kick in earlier on, because we do not want to be told, “You really didn’t want to do that” some way down the line when the money has already been spent and we are well past the point of no return.
I am not sure that I can add much more at this stage. As I said, the island impact assessment has exposed many of the concerns that Rhoda Grant, our former colleague Gail Ross and I articulated at previous committee meetings. Those concerns were shared by many committee colleagues at that stage. It might be useful for this committee to follow that up with the cabinet secretary and HIAL.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Liam McArthur
Do you mean the island impact assessment?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 22 June 2021
Liam McArthur
Other than being an islander, I have no registrable interests to declare in relation to the committee, but I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Legacy Papers
Meeting date: 22 June 2021
Liam McArthur
First, I want to thank the committee for choosing me as deputy convener. Like you, convener, I feel that it is a real privilege.
I, too, have looked at the legacy papers of the committees that are relevant to the work of this committee, and I have to say that they do not lack options with regard to issues that there will be pressure and an expectation on us to cover. It seems logical to continue with the work on the operation of the internal market and rural frameworks.
In addition, we have the questions around future trade deals that are being pursued. Parliament has already given some consideration to them, but the committee has the opportunity to drill down into those deals.
On the good food nation, I assume that we will have a bill to deal with it in due course, but we should consider whether we can find some time before then to squeeze in pre-legislative consultation on some of the areas that the good food nation bill is likely to cover.
It seems that we will have to revisit aquaculture from more of an island perspective. I also have a keen interest in continuing to shine a light on issues around ferry procurement.
There is a bit of dubiety about whether digital connectivity sits in our remit or in that of another committee, but over the past 18 months, the issue has demonstrated itself to be one of almost existential importance to many island and rural communities. Therefore, if we have any locus in that regard, we could usefully turn our attention to the matter.
I will flag one other issue, which is not on the list. The Public Petitions Committee was looking at a petition relating to centralisation of air traffic control services, which cuts across the interests of this committee. We will need to wait to see what the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee seeks to do with the matter, because it is part of its legacy paper. However, if there is an appropriate way of following up on that, I am supportive of doing so.
