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 2700 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
John Mason
I accept that that is a problem.
The final issue that I want to talk about is the proposal on littering from vehicles. I find it hard to get my head around how it could possibly work unless there is somebody with a camera photographing people who are dropping litter out of vehicles. What would the cost of that proposal be? The financial memorandum suggests that it could be self-financing. Is that possible?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
John Mason
To take another angle, I want to pick up your point that, in future, you might not be allowed to charge for the uplift of specific items such as garden waste. Glasgow has just started doing that, and I think that other councils have been doing it. Will you explain to us what the issue is?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
John Mason
Mr Jack, you referred to grey bins. I do not know what people can put into grey bins in your council area, but in mine grey bins are only for food. Could councils work together and have the same colours of bins? Would that help?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
John Mason
As a committee, we have to go back and say whether it is a good or a bad financial memorandum. Which do you think that we should say?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
John Mason
From a slightly different angle but on the same subject, the financial memorandum states that the costs that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency might get or need in relation to the disposal of unsold consumer goods range from £30,000 to £200,000, the latter being if it was more proactive. I find that interesting because it is a very wide range and it brings in the issue of being proactive, which I did not particularly see elsewhere in relation to either councils or anyone else. That raises the wider question of whether you want to be more proactive. Do you need to be more proactive, and would that really cost seven times more than if you did the minimum?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
John Mason
However, if the person who was involved challenged that, would you find it hard to prove?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
Absolutely. That is right.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
I will press you on that point. You say that the borrowing capacity has increased, which it has, but we thought that we were going to have a £700 million adjustment. Thankfully, we will not have a £700 million adjustment, but if we had done, the new borrowing limit would not have covered it. Is that correct?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
I certainly accept that that is positive, but it still worries me that certain things were not on the table and that a wider review was not on the table. I feel that there is a fundamental problem, even with the index per capita method. Our population is struggling because Westminster will not allow extra immigration into Scotland. We compete pretty well with all the regions of England apart from London and the south-east. Earlier, you said that, when it comes to inward investment, we are second only to London and the south-east. However, we are always second to London and the south-east. Therefore, it seems to me that, when we compare our economic growth with England’s, we are comparing ourselves with a country that is dominated by London and the south-east. Call me pessimistic, but I struggle to see how we will ever be able to compete with them, so we will always be financially disadvantaged.
