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 841 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
On a similar point, there are some areas where you have indicated that you are looking for parity, largely, with the UK scheme, so that Scottish freeports are not at a disadvantage. What engagement are you having on the freeport projects—if, for example, there was a need to change the five-year transaction date? How is that engagement happening?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Thanks. The convener, Liz Smith and others have spoken about the impact of displacement as well as the costs involved, such as the advertised cost of £5 million in terms of land and buildings transaction tax, and how that might be offset by increases in income tax take. How detailed will that information be on income tax? Will you be able to determine from local tax figures whether there is displacement? Will that be an opportunity to see where displacement is happening and its impact? How soon would we be able to see that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Good morning to the minister and his colleagues. I make it clear that I was pleased to support the winning Cromarty Firth bid.
A number of the issues that I was looking to raise have been covered; I will address a couple of things that colleagues have raised. In response to the convener’s questions, you talked about the role of infrastructure such as new schools, hospitals and housing, which will be vital to accommodate the new people and new jobs that we hope will come to freeport areas and will probably be vital to the success of freeports. You suggested that such infrastructure is a local government responsibility, and we know that local government is under severe financial pressure in delivering the services that it provides already. As a Government, how will you ensure that such services can be developed, given their importance to the project as a whole?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Is there a specific vehicle for doing that? Obviously, some of the resources that will be needed further down the track will need to be delivered through the decisions that are being made now and the consultations that are being held now, whether those are on the structure that we have just talked about or infrastructure such as the A9, which we know is considerably behind schedule. Is there a specific group that is working on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Therefore, if there were movement on either side on, for example, a need to change the situation, that is where it would be brought up and taken forward.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Will that operate on a Scotland-wide model, or will it look at, for example, displacement of jobs from the periphery of the freeports, such as within 100 miles or 50 miles?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
That is all fine. You talk about working in partnership, but with whom? Hospitals, schools and houses have to be built. If the money is not there to build them, how do they get built? How will you as a Government work with Highland Council, in the case of Cromarty Firth, to ensure that additional resources are available as you hope that they will be?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
It will not necessarily be needed for a bit of time, but when do you expect the framework to be in place?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
I recognise what you say about wanting to be there from the beginning of the process and be part of that decision making. This is a devil’s advocate question, really, but do you not see value in that engagement even now, with the two winning bids—the two consortiums—at least around getting that information to them and ensuring that they are aware of it all?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
I understand the point that you are making and the arguments that you have made previously, but it does not sound at this stage that you have asked either, so that might be an area in which to start.
