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 1103 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
Even since you made that investment, the market has changed significantly. We now see a lot of private companies that—if we are being perfectly honest—want to buy up huge swathes of Scotland to plant trees, including native species, not for commercial planting but to offset their carbon footprint. Given that the market is changing, what mechanisms do you have in place to enable you to say, “Well, actually, we no longer need to have a role there,” because the private sector—including green lairds and all sorts of interesting organisations—is moving in to buy up land for tree planting? Is there a mechanism for the bank to say that it does not need to be there, because the private sector is, rightly or wrongly, filling that gap?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
I quoted your target and I would like to know why you failed to meet it.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
It would certainly take a leap to go from 20,500 to 130,000 jobs just by changing the definition. I would be keen to hear what the Government’s target actually is, however you define it.
I will briefly raise a final issue. I have previously raised the issue of the cluttered landscape that businesses and organisations face when they seek support, which was highlighted by Audit Scotland. You changed the name of the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board; I think that you now call it the snappy “national strategy for economic transformation delivery board”, which you will co-chair. If I am a business that is getting on with the day job and looking to see where I am best placed to get support from all the various organisations, how does the strategy make that less cluttered? You are obviously not removing any of those organisations, so what has changed from that very cluttered landscape that businesses keep referring to?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
Good morning to the panel. With regard to the bank’s role in investing where the private sector is failing to provide sufficient funds, your biggest investment is £50 million in a forestry fund that is run by the asset manager Gresham House. I have to say that that firm has admitted to owning a management company in Guernsey, which is a well-known tax haven. Forestry is not short of people queuing up to invest, so where did you see a particular market failure in that sector that you needed to fill? I notice that your website says that the forest growth and sustainability fund is going to create rural jobs. How many jobs have been created so far as a result of that investment?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
We should go much further with conditionality in areas such as trade union access.
You mentioned one big issue that trade unions are deeply concerned about, which is jobs in the supply chain. You highlighted offshore wind. The former First Minister, Alex Salmond, said that Scotland would be the “Saudi Arabia of renewables”. The Government promised that there would be 130,000 jobs in renewables. The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that that number is 20,500 and that it is actually falling. Why has the Government failed to meet those targets? If we are focusing on delivery, what is your new target for renewable jobs?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
You say that it has an important role to play, but the Government is ending that fund at the end of the month. It has been £13 million a year over the past 10 years. A market failure was identified when it was set up.
In response to a parliamentary question, the Government said that one of the reasons why it is ending the fund is that
“There are new investment mechanisms in place, through the Scottish National Investment Bank, which supports the Scottish Government’s strategic priorities to achieving our net zero ambitions.”—[Written Answers, 11 March 2022; S6W-06172.]
Given that that £13 million-a-year fund, which is largely spent on community renewables, is being ended in a few weeks’ time, what is the bank doing to support community renewables?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scottish National Investment Bank
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
But you do not have a mechanism by which you can say, “Well, actually, we don’t need to put that money there—somebody else will fill that gap.”
Economy and Fair Work Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
Good morning, cabinet secretary. The Scottish Trades Union Congress has branded the strategy a “missed opportunity” to deliver a “transformative change”, saying that there is not enough focus on improving pay and conditions in the foundational economy, which is the largest employer and an engine room of economic activity. Roz Foyer, who is part of the advisory council that you referred to, said:
“this is more a strategy for economic status quo than economic transformation.”
Why do you think the STUC is wrong?
10:00Economy and Fair Work Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 16 March 2022
Colin Smyth
When the general secretary of the STUC says that
“this is more a strategy for economic status quo than economic transformation”,
there must be things missing from the strategy.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Smyth
So, under your current plan, you aim to reduce the 1,174 staff that you have at the moment to 894 by 2025-26, which is quite a substantial reduction. Are you saying that that may be revised because of the backlog?
