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 3464 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Richard Leonard
We have a final couple of questions, which Willie Coffey will put.
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
To go back to Sharon Dowey’s point, I presume that those figures were not just plucked out of thin air. I presume that they were informed assessments of what was likely to be needed in order to help to meet the Government’s target.
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
I get that, but I also take cognisance of the fact that the previous First Minister declared that we have a climate emergency. That suggests that some fairly urgent action should be taken rather than a gradualist approach.
I do not know whether Mr Signorini can speak a little about what is happening with peatland restoration and why there is a hold-up there.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
I will now bring in Willie Coffey, who has a suite of questions to ask.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
One of the points in the report is that Scottish Canals needs to consider the value for money of its approach to valuations, including whether it is getting value for money from the consultants that it engages. Have you seen any evidence that it is doing that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
I will move on to a different question, which is about the leadership of the organisation. We are aware that the former chief executive of Scottish Canals left and that, as recently as May this year, a new chief executive started. Was there a gap before that position was filled and, if there was a gap, has that contributed to some of the difficulties?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Mark Taylor mentioned earlier that there had been a risk warning about this being a possibility as far back as 2012; we are almost a decade on and auditors are still issuing disclaimers. Some fundamental problems still exist, such as turbulence in the finance team and the leadership of the organisation, and so on. Why is Transport Scotland not injecting some stability into that equation?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
We are trying our best to be strategic this morning and not to get too much into pork-barrel politics, Mr Hoy.
I call the deputy convener.
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay, but to again go back to Sharon Dowey’s point, why set a target if it is not an informed target that is realistic and achievable? I think that that is a legitimate question that we are posing this morning.
Another area relating to the restoration of nature is the investment in woodland, forestry and so on, which again is not quite meeting the target. Does that take the shape of grants to private landowners and to some of the equity funds that are involved in the carbon offset racket?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Richard Leonard
I turn to Alison Irvine for a particular area of interest, which is the whole question of net zero targets and what we are doing on transport. As you rightly say, that is first and foremost about getting people on to public transport. However, one of the other goals that the Government has set is on electric vehicle charging networks and so on. I noticed recently that an announcement was made that the Government was withdrawing from the EV charging network ChargePlace Scotland and leaving that to the private sector. Is that correct?
