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 2465 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Willie Coffey
In the absence of new proposals that might be delivered within the context of NPF4, how do we deal with the high streets that have—as we saw yesterday—empty, abandoned and derelict cinemas and shops, with trees growing out of them and graffiti all over the windows? There are no plans or proposals coming from the communities at the moment for any of that stuff. Are the planning powers that we have sufficient to deal with any of that?
Local people ask me what they can do about the problem and how they can help to improve the powers that the planning authorities need so that they can intervene and turn those areas around. There is a hope that NPF4 will embrace that and allow the local authorities to intervene more directly to improve the look, feel and vibrancy of built heritage in the urban setting that has been dormant and abandoned for so long. Anything that you could say on that would be very welcome, minister.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, minister. I want to touch on a subject that has come up time and again in our evidence sessions to date, which is how the NPF4 can influence the look and feel of our town centres. As you know, and as all members will be aware, we all suffer from complaints from constituents about our high streets, where there are abandoned or derelict parcels of land, and that also applies to shops and buildings. Multiple ownership is often involved.
In one of our sessions, we heard from Celebrate Kilmarnock about some of the good work that is going on down there to create more community spaces and dispose of old redundant properties and buildings. Yesterday, the committee met some people in Govan and we heard some of their wonderful ideas about regenerating that part of the city of Glasgow. Will you give us a flavour of how the NPF4 can influence the look and feel of our town centres to deal with the problems I have mentioned, some of which have been prevalent for many years?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Willie Coffey
That is really helpful. That has been a recurring theme for the committee, and those comments are welcome.
My final question is about how NPF4 integrates with other things. You mentioned STPR2. I am also interested in how NPF4 integrates with the city growth deals, for example. Our Govan friends talked about that yesterday. One of their onstream projects will be funded through the city growth deal. How do you see NPF4 integrating with other major initiatives such as city growth deal funding and the levelling up funding that is, as we know, coming in from another direction? How can we ensure that it is all co-ordinated and everybody is singing from the same hymn sheet as far as possible?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Before I ask a question on SEPA’s financial sustainability in light of the cyberattack, I will ask about something else about which I am curious.
What volume of data are we talking about? In the report, I can see only a reference in the appendix, on page 9, to about 1.2GB of data being stolen. Is that it? Are we talking about only 1.2GB of data? That is a tiny amount of data that has had such a catastrophic impact.
I refer to my earlier point about offline storage. You can buy data sticks that accommodate huge amounts of data for £10 or £50. You can put almost your entire data set on separate physical data sticks. Nothing can hack them if you do that.
Is there any information on the volume of data that SEPA lost and whether the right strategy is in place to protect it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
My final question is about the long-term implications for SEPA’s financial sustainability. You said that we do not know the full cost of the cyberattack, but do you have any indications of how it will affect SEPA’s financial sustainability?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
I imagine that cyberattackers make a reasoned guess about how we all behave when we use computers. We are all vulnerable to inadvertently clicking on a link in an email—that seems to be a common route. It seems to me that all systems need the sophistication to guard against that, even when we make those mistakes. Perhaps your colleagues can talk about whether additional protections can be put into systems so that, if we are subjected to phishing and even if we click links, a degree of protection is still available.
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Thank you.
Convener, I hope to come back in later, but for the moment I pass back to you.
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Auditor General, you tell us in the report that the Government established a skills alignment assurance group but wound it up less than a year after it was established. Can you give us a bit more information on what happened and whether the decision to wind it up was supported by the partners in the arrangement?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Auditor General, can you say something about the regional dimension of what we have been discussing? You mention in the report that the Government signalled a change to its approach to skills alignment in December 2020. How do we plan locally and regionally—for example, in Ayrshire—to match up skills to emerging economic opportunities? How does that shape up against the training and courses and so on that we offer in our colleges? Can you say a bit more about the regional dimension and what the impact of all your reporting is having on the successful delivery of that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Thank you very much.
