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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 2321 contributions
|
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Allotments
Meeting date: 14 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning. Before I ask a few questions about guidance on the 2015 act and the 250m2 assumption—[Inaudible]—on whether people who are on the waiting list are participating in other projects such as community garden spaces and so on.
The reason why I ask is that East Ayrshire does not have any allotments, they tell me, and it does not have anybody applying, but there are a number of examples of community garden spaces here, there and everywhere. Ian, you said there were 5,400 or so people on waiting lists in Edinburgh and maybe 1,800 in Glasgow. Are those people participating by other means or are they just not able to do so at all? What is the picture?
10:45Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Allotments
Meeting date: 14 June 2022
Willie Coffey
I think that Rosanne Woods has talked about the 250 m² requirement. Does there need to be flexibility around that? Do local authorities have to allocate 250 m², or could we be more flexible? Could we give people some kind of entry-level plot that is perhaps easier to manage, and might enable us to allocate smaller allotment sizes and spaces to people in order to get those waiting lists down? Should we be more flexible about the requirement for 250 m² that is in the legislation?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Allotments
Meeting date: 14 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Karen, do you or Maria want to come in?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Allotments
Meeting date: 14 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Thank you. What do you think, Ian?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Mo, would you say that that was a value-for-money appointment? We understand that it was very expensive to make.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning. I want to open up discussion on the nationalisation issue, which Colin Beattie led questions on that Colin Cook tried to answer. That was a huge decision to have made without a technical appraisal or some kind of technical diligence check being carried out. Colin Cook, will you explain why that was not, or could not, be done at that point to give us the fullest possible picture of whether the nationalisation process was the best course of action to take?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Willie Coffey
My colleague Craig Hoy will probably wish to come in on the nationalisation issues, but I have one last question. Given the current position and revised estimates for completion, is the project now on track and on budget? How often is there a report on progress on the project and who is reported to? How can the public be assured, in relation to the revisions that were made to the estimates surrounding the project, that it will remain on track and on budget from this point onwards?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Moving on from that point, did anyone get an opportunity to challenge the revised costings that were tabled? The information that we have in front of us is that the programme review board did not have the opportunity to scrutinise the revised costings in any great detail. How are we to be assured that the revised costings for the project were believable, viable, deliverable and so on?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Could you clarify for my benefit whether, in effect, the turnaround director did the technical appraisal and diligence check from that point on, which led to the revised costs? Is that what you are saying here? We have heard previously that the appointment of the turnaround director was quite an expensive one. Was the purpose of the turnaround director’s role to do the technical diligence check at that point and to put the revised costings in place?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Allotments
Meeting date: 31 May 2022
Willie Coffey
What proportion of the people in that list of 5,000 are participating through the other means that Lou Evans has been describing? Do you think that they are engaging in other activities?
