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 1377 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
That is an important point.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
On the thematic point about the balance between standardisation, commingling systems and kerbside segregation, we heard evidence on our visit to a recycling centre that it would be most helpful if waste was segregated into three groups: glass, plastic and metal, and paper and cardboard. Would such standardisation across the country, at least at a high level, be a useful and consistent approach that could lead to higher recycling rates?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
I will move on to a related, but slightly different area. You will appreciate that, when some stakeholders have engaged with us in the bill process—businesses in particular—they have been cognisant of considerations about alignment to a UK-wide approach where possible when powers in the bill are to be used. They have been mindful of the situation with the deposit return scheme and the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020. Do any of you have any feedback that you would like to share with the committee on whether regulatory divergence within the UK affects your sector? Is there anything that you would like to bring to our attention in that regard?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
It is interesting to hear your thoughts, because a lot of considerations around alignment—whether in the European Union or the UK—are about producer responsibility and products being sold in the market. However, you are saying that the ability to trade waste that comes from the processes into other markets is also something to be cognisant of in the bill’s process and implementation.
Does anyone want to add anything to what Mr Freeland said?
As they do not, I think that we can move on, convener.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
That is helpful. You say that fining households is less of a priority than educating households, but do you support holding to account carriers of waste to a higher degree?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
I will direct this question initially to Pauline Walker and Peter Bain, as they have already commented on these issues, but I am happy to hear from others, too.
We have already gone over this somewhat, but one of the key tensions lies in how we support a system in which there is a great deal of freedom to enable young people to realise their potential and develop their abilities while, at the same time, we have a system of accountability, with all the considerations in that respect. After all, Parliament will want to comment on the statistics, the media will want to write about them and commentators will want to talk about them, too. There has been some criticism—for example, in the Morgan review—that too much focus has been placed on attainment results in measuring the success of schools. At the moment, who holds schools accountable for their performance? Who supports improvement? How does the system work currently, and what would you like to be changed so that it works differently and better in future? Pauline, can you respond to that question first?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
I am content with that. I thank the witnesses for all their answers.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
Tolerance. That is the word that you used, wisely.
A common theme that we have heard from a number of people who have given evidence to us recently is that the political arena needs to create the space and have the maturity and tolerance to enable the change that needs to happen. Do you want to say anything more about that? It is a responsibility that we and our colleagues need to share and about which we need to be serious.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
Thank you for sharing that inspirational story, Mr Hutton. To follow on from what you said, it is important to emphasise that, although Pauline Walker and you have stated that interventions, alternatives and innovative programmes are expensive, we must keep in mind what they create in respect of young people contributing to society and what they save in respect of the Christie principles and potentially in respect of other services.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Ben Macpherson
The review mentions other recently published reviews of education and skills, and you have spoken about your engagement with Professor Hayward. How can the Scottish Government best oversee this period of reform? How quickly can we move forward? In your opening answer, you talked about being glad that some time is being taken to consider implementation but said that there should a balance.
