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 2215 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Climate Change and Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
Graham Simpson
It is a regulation.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Climate Change and Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
Graham Simpson
It is a transport issue, but it is also an energy one—it involves the kind of energy that we use. I would like to see this provision apply across the UK, because if we are going to encourage people to use electric vehicles, we need more EV charging stations, which this regulation will make happen.
An example of where we are failing, which I think that the convener is well aware of, is the fact that, on the A9, we have not even designed in a service station, let alone an EV charging station. It seems to me that, if we want to mirror the EU, we need to be looking at exactly this kind of thing.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
Graham Simpson
I wonder whether the report could set out what is being recycled now and what is not. Mr Golden and I are aware that certain products that people put in their recycling bins are not actually getting recycled. I wonder whether the report could go into that level of detail. If it did, it would be of great interest to the public and it would help us to address the gaps.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Climate Change and Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
Graham Simpson
It is still morning, so good morning, cabinet secretary. Just to get it clear in my head, I go back to the very start, where we were talking about the climate change bill and the climate change plan. Currently, legally, you have to produce a climate change plan by November, but you want to delay that and introduce a climate change bill. Am I right in thinking that, in order for it to be legal for you not to have a climate change plan by November, you would need to have a climate change bill passed before that?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Climate Change and Environmental Governance
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
Graham Simpson
Perhaps you could write to the committee on the detail of the regulation. I will leave it there, convener.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
Graham Simpson
I, too, have been listening very carefully to what you have been saying, convener, and it must strike a chord with probably every single member here. I have already mentioned litter picking during the course of stage 2. I am sure that most of us will have picked litter, and I recall how, when I was doing so in a wooded area next to the East Kilbride expressway, which is a dual carriageway, I saw litter everywhere. It had to have been thrown from vehicles. Of course, some of it had not been—there were sofas deep in the woods, for example—but a lot of it must have been from vehicles and it was inaccessible to the council. You have said, convener, that somebody has got to come and clear the rubbish up; sometimes that somebody is just a volunteer, not the council, and sometimes the litter, particularly bottles, can be left for years, unless somebody comes along and picks it up.
I do not have a vote on this, but if I had, I would be strongly supporting the amendments for the reasons outlined.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Graham Simpson
Thank you. Those comments were very positive. It is that kind of discussion ahead of stage 3 that I have been trying to achieve with a number of my amendments. After all, this is a process. I will comment further on this when I sum up on the group, but the minister’s remarks have been useful and I will certainly have that discussion with her ahead of stage 3.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Graham Simpson
Ben Macpherson is a very considered member and usually makes very good points, as he has done on this occasion. I did not refer to the plastic bag charge, and Mr Macpherson is absolutely right—the main point of that charge was to reduce littering. I certainly reuse plastic bags, as I am sure that Mr Macpherson does. He is right to say that different products could be treated differently.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Graham Simpson
The minister makes a reasonable point, except that those of us who know how the affirmative or super-affirmative procedure works know that such regulations are not subject to the same level of scrutiny as something that is put in a bill.
Earlier, the minister said that the Government can go out to consultation on all of this. The problem is that there is no ability for members to change what the Government puts forward. As Douglas Lumsden said, it is either a yes or a no. That is the problem with framework bills—the use of which is increasing, as the committee said in its report.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Graham Simpson
I thank Mr Ruskell for those useful comments. I go back to what I said to Mr Macpherson, when he commented on the plastic bag charge, which I think is about reducing littering. His point was that we need to look at different products differently, so it depends on what we are talking about.
That is why I was after some more clarity in the text of the bill, so that it becomes less of a framework bill. At this point, the committee—-and at stage 3, the whole Parliament—would be able to say, “Well actually, we’re not happy just to leave all this to Government and to regulations.” The problem with regulations, as Mr Ruskell is well aware, is that when a regulation comes to the committee, it will require a simple yes or no; we would not be able to tweak it.
