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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 1237 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Paul McLennan
Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
You are right to ask how overarching strategies come into NPF4 and how that sort of thing is interpreted. There will be a degree of flexibility in interpretation, with each local authority looking at these things differently. It is certainly an issue for the committee to grapple with.
Professor Sparks, do you want to come in on this question? As far as economic development in some of our cities is concerned, some old buildings might need to be upgraded, but there is also the impact of the essential actions that must be taken to reduce carbon emissions, which might make those buildings unviable. What are your thoughts in that respect?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
I have a supplementary question for all three witnesses. Is there a need for clear supplementary guidance from each local planning authority in that regard, on top of NPF4? Obviously, we are talking about delivering NPF4, but what do we need beyond that? Maybe Professor Hague or Dr Brown wants to answer that. For example, in Edinburgh, given the built environment, is there sufficient guidance just now, or do we need clear supplementary guidance as well?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
Thank you.
Professor Sparks, could you give a bit more detail on the issue of “town centre first” planning? You have said that the direction of travel should be to make high streets and main streets mixed used, which involves people living on those streets—and many people want to do that. Could you answer the question with your town centre hat on?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
Professor Hague, I have a question about the policies in the draft NPF4 that are aimed at protecting our built heritage and about reaching the right balance between preservation and allowing essential action to reduce carbon emissions. Do you have any comments on that? What changes would you like to see in that regard?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
You will know with your Cockburn Association hat on the relevance of that approach in Edinburgh and, indeed, with lots of buildings.
Perhaps Dr Brown can give us her thoughts on this question, and then Professor Sparks can talk about this issue with regard to the development of our town centres, given the number of old historic buildings that might be involved in that.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
Barbara, do you want to touch on that with regard to the work that you do?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
That is certainly vital. Perhaps Clare Symonds can respond before I move on to my other question.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Paul McLennan
Is there a danger that, with all these studies and consultations going out together, there is no coherent strategy behind it all? Some policies could, for example, have an impact on others. Do we need to stand back a little bit, look at what needs to be done—and at what time it needs to be done—and see what the impact might be on other consultations? Is there any impact in that respect, or is it just a resource issue?
