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 1514 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
I understand that things have been challenging, and I am not particularly asking you to get into direct conflict with the Auditor General, but he has stated in black and white at the opening of this report, which is the subject of today’s session, some very clear criticisms of the Scottish Government. I guess that that is what we are looking at.
Obviously, the target is going to be revised. I do not want to say that it is going to be ditched—indeed, you can use whatever language you prefer—but, clearly, the 20 per cent target will no longer exist at some point this year. What are the reasons for changing it? I guess that this is a bit of a multiple-choice question. Is the target being changed because you were not going to meet it and it is therefore easier for it not to exist, which would make for a better news story? Is it because the target was the wrong one in the first place? Is it because the metrics that were being used were incorrect or not appropriate? Is it because you do not need to meet the target, because you are going to hit other emissions reduction targets instead? Or is it none of the above?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
Why is there no data for 2023 or 2024?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
Glasgow and Edinburgh are the two most inhabited council areas and are also, I presume, the source of a great deal of the emissions. Is focusing on those cities the correct approach, or is it the case that everyone has to carry their share of the burden? I suspect that the approach that Glasgow and Edinburgh want to take will be different from the approach that places such as the Borders, Aberdeen, the Highlands and Inverclyde want to take. Everyone has different needs in those various demographic environments. How do we marry that up?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
It absolutely is.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
And what percentage of that 39 per cent concerns combustion engines, which are bad for the environment?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
Do you mean the discussions about the regulatory environment that the councils will operate in?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
That raises an interesting point that the committee has explored before. If the target is solely about the number of miles or kilometres that people drive but not what they are driving in, it is meaningless. If everyone drove an environmentally friendly electric or carbon-neutral vehicle—I acknowledge that that is not necessarily always possible—the number of kilometres or miles driven would not marry up to the emissions targets. Surely, the ambition should be to get people out of combustion-engine vehicles and into cleaner, greener and safer vehicles.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
That brings me to my last area of questioning. As national and local government move forward with their ambitions to reduce emissions, improve people’s health and improve active travel, how do we ensure that that is not done at the expense of people who have no other choice? We all know that public transport is not universally accessible and that the service has been reducing in many areas, particularly in small towns, rural areas and island communities, where it is incredibly difficult to get around by public transport. I think that we have to accept that. There are a number of groups of people who will be directly affected by additional measures to reduce car usage, particularly the disabled, public sector workers, people who work in the night-time economy and small businesses—people who have no choice. Those people have very valid concerns about what has been happening over the past few years, and they might be concerned about what they have heard this morning about further measures that might be introduced. How do we alleviate those concerns? How do we say to them that we have to drive forward the net zero ambition but not at the expense of the economy or people’s personal lives?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
I just want to check timings, convener. How long can I go on for? I have tonnes of questions, but I do not want to go over time.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
Apologies for going on about this, but I do not want anyone to be confused. To be clear, you are saying that, of all Scotland’s emissions, 39 per cent are transport related and that, of the transport-related emissions, 39 per cent—coincidentally—are caused by domestic cars.
