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 1163 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
National Planning Framework (NPF4)
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Liam Kerr
I do, convener, but it is for Dr Brown, so perhaps you could bring me in at the end, if she reconnects.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
National Planning Framework (NPF4)
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Liam Kerr
I want to pick up on the line of questioning that Mark Ruskell explored with Dr Brown. You talked about a lack of strategy in NPF4 and STPR2. We have heard quite a lot about the urban possibilities, but it is difficult to relate a lot of that to rural settings or areas where bus services perhaps cannot be run for financial reasons. That point is correctly set out in the CPT written submission.
The United Kingdom Committee on Climate Change says that we need 30,000 public electric vehicle chargers by 2030; we currently have about 2,500. To go back to your comments about the lack of strategy, does NPF4 sufficiently account for roll-out of EV chargers and can it facilitate the extent of roll-out that we need?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Liam Kerr
Thank you. I have one final question, minister, on measurement. The stated aims of the policy, which you alluded to earlier, include reducing car use and increasing use of public transport. How does the Scottish Government intend to formally measure what is happening in order to establish whether the implementation of a workplace parking levy has caused the aims to be achieved—in other words, that there is causation rather than simply correlation? Also, to go back to the convener’s point, how does the Scottish Government intend to measure whether, if employers pass the cost on to employees, we are not simply forcing the lower-paid members of a company on to public transport while the higher-paid members avail themselves of the parking spaces?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Liam Kerr
I have no further questions, convener.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
National Planning Framework (NPF4)
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Liam Kerr
No—that was an interesting answer. Local authorities face severe funding challenges, and you say that
“there must be an understanding that any bus route new or existing will receive on-going public sector funding”.
Has central Government sufficiently recognised that in NPF4 or more widely, in order to meet the aims that we all want to achieve, and which you pointed out?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
National Planning Framework (NPF4)
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Liam Kerr
I am very grateful for that answer. Your last point might be the key one. I have in mind the situation in Montrose in my region, which I have been very active—along with colleagues across the parties—in trying to address.
That leads on to a similar point. Several witnesses have talked about the current burdens on local authorities. As Bruce Wilson pointed out, that is in a context of major budget cuts and funding pressures. In your view, given what you have said about the need to proactively address the issue, is NPF4 sufficiently cognisant of the ability of local government, financially and resource-wise, to mitigate what is happening in Montrose and elsewhere? Does it need to be stronger in mandating central Government to provide the resources and the financing?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
National Planning Framework (NPF4)
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Liam Kerr
I will direct a question to Paul White, based on the line of questioning that we have just heard from Monica Lennon. The CPT submission talks about the need for bus services to receive on-going funding, absent which operators will need to make some difficult decisions on, for example, fares, routes and frequency. The committee is carrying out an inquiry into local authorities’ ability to support the measures to achieve net zero, and we know that significant cuts to local authority budgets are coming. Noting that, is there sufficient recognition in NPF4 or more widely of what central Government needs to do to prevent the negative impacts that you mention in your submission?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Liam Kerr
To go back a stage, you talked about moving funds to support the green agenda. My question is related to the question that my friend Mark Ruskell asked earlier. More generally, how do you measure or project what the prospects of achievement for each project will be and whether the funding will be sufficient to deliver that? Similarly, how do you measure or project the opportunity cost of the reduction in investment elsewhere?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
National Planning Framework (Energy)
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Liam Kerr
I cannot see whether anyone else wants to respond, so I will pose another question.
Dr Kerr referred earlier to the expectation that industrial developments with waste or surplus heat will be co-located with areas of demand. As we know, a significant proportion of demand will be for domestic heat. How do we strike a balance between using sources of low-carbon heat and building houses where people actually want to live?
Thinking about your last answer, I wonder whether that issue has been addressed anywhere else. What I am hearing from you—and, indeed, what we have seen in the submission from Scottish Renewables—is a feeling that this framework has been drafted somewhat in isolation. Is there anything else that we need to be aware of in this particular space?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Liam Kerr
In your opening remarks, you mentioned the allocation of £20 million to the just transition fund. What or who precisely is that paying for or going to? What are the measurable year 1 outcomes of that £20 million?
