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 1245 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Liam Kerr
I would like to follow up both an earlier question from the convener and the one that he has just asked. The convener talked earlier about the cost of a basket—that is, the cost of shopping. We know that the DRS could add up to, let us say, 40p per unit. Given the cost of living crisis and the increase in the cost of the weekly shopping, has the Government investigated or done any research on the impact that the scheme might have on inflation?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Liam Kerr
I want to be clear, because I asked you a very direct question. From what you are saying—you looked around the world at what was happening elsewhere—the Scottish Government knew that small retailers would be disproportionately impacted and that some businesses’ viability would be threatened.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Deposit Return Scheme
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Liam Kerr
So you did not do that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Liam Kerr
Thank you. I will make this the last question for just now. Daniela Diz, are there any priorities or targets that the committee needs to be particularly aware of and that we need to say are key targets that we need to prioritise? Are there any targets that will be particularly difficult to achieve that the committee needs to focus on?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Liam Kerr
Good morning. Dr Mitchell, you talked about implementation of the COP15 outcomes and translating those into SMART targets—that is, targets that are specific, achievable, time bound and so on. You also talked about funding and monitoring. Do the new biodiversity strategy and delivery plan align to the GBF targets and the items that you have spoken about? How translatable are the targets from COP15 into domestic Scottish policy?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Liam Kerr
My next question is for Deborah Long. We have only seven years, and Dr Mitchell has said that more must be done and that we need to get the plan together. Have we really got time?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Liam Kerr
The worry seems to be that there could be a degree of complacency.
Colin Galbraith, you said earlier that the world looks to Scotland and that we show the world what we are doing. I found that quite surprising, given that Scotland failed to meet the Aichi targets that were mentioned earlier. I think that we met nine of the 20 targets and the ones that were met were not quite the key ones—that is perhaps just my personal view. On that note, the GBF talks about increasing the ambition on finance for biodiversity, and target 19 talks about scaling up finance for biodiversity. We have just had a budget. Colin Galbraith, has that target been met?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
COP15 Outcomes
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Liam Kerr
I am very grateful. Unless anyone else wants to respond to that question, I will hand back to the convener.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2023
Liam Kerr
Just for completeness, how much is it going to cost? What is the total funding required to achieve what it sounds like you are trying to achieve?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Ferry Services Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2023
Liam Kerr
I have one final question at this stage. In your opening statement, you mentioned the long-term plan for vessels and ports. I was interested in the part of the plan that states:
“We will reduce the average age of the fleet to around 15 years by the end of this decade.”
In our earlier session today, representatives from CMAL talked about their plans to do that. They are reasonably confident that they will be able to achieve that, but they also talked about the cost of doing so. You might have heard the chief executive say right at the end that CMAL needs money to replace ferries. I think that I heard them say that the cost of that was £1.4 billion even before inflation reached its current level. Do you have an idea of the cost—adjusted for inflation—of achieving a fleet with an average age of 15 years by the end of the decade, and will CMAL have enough money to do that?
