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 2374 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Water Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23
Meeting date: 31 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
I am sorry to interrupt. It is good to get the detail on that, but I am thinking about what Alex Plant said about the other extreme, which is drought situations. It is clear that you are describing resilience and how plant is operating. What about drought and the bigger challenges around reservoir water levels and everything else?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Water Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23
Meeting date: 31 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
Thank you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Water Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23
Meeting date: 31 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
I am interested to understand how you engage with stakeholders. There are obviously customer forums, and there is the role of the economic regulator, but I am interested in what your relationship is with environmental organisations and campaigners, in particular.
We heard earlier that Surfers Against Sewage has been very critical in recent media coverage. Do you engage with those organisations? Do you meet with the likes of Feargal Sharkey and others who are campaigning in that area? Do you take on board their concerns?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
My question is about the role of small and medium-sized enterprises, social enterprises and community businesses in the circular economy and whether they can be supported through financing. Over the years, that is where some great innovation has taken place in relation to the circular economy. Can you find mechanisms to support such business models?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
Finally, I turn to the opportunities around offshore wind, which you mentioned. There is potential with onshore wind too, and with a linkage between the onshore and offshore sectors. Given that we will be going through quite a dramatic phase of repowering onshore wind farms, do you see a circular economy opportunity to develop a supply chain and links to the offshore industries?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
Have the difficulties with 801 and 802 affected you as a business? Would you have expected to have more work coming in, or is the work on the frigates what you would have expected to have right now?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
Returning to the issue of overhead recovery, you said in your letter to the committee that some of the overheads for the yard would be covered by “other business”. Will you describe what that other business is? Has that other business come in since nationalisation?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 24 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
So you do not see any reputational damage.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
The budget for your portfolio is minuscule compared with that for many other portfolios. It is several orders of magnitude smaller than that for health. That poses challenges, particularly when your portfolio includes responsibility for major events on an international stage involving big, multimillion pound budgets, as well as responsibility for culture, the budget for which is primarily about funding the incredible organisations that exist in our communities and all the benefits that they deliver.
It feels as though there is a tension there with regard to funding. What you have announced today suggests that there has been quite a major shift in thinking within the Government about how major national events should be funded. Could you explore that a little more? It feels as though that shift is partly to do with lessons that have been learned from hosting the UCI world cycling championships, which I agree were a fantastic success. Are there other factors to bear in mind in that context?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Mark Ruskell
The nub of the concern from the creative sector relates to the demand on the multiyear fund that Creative Scotland has set up and the expectation that organisations that did not get approval for multiyear funding would be able to apply for a separate fund, which would come out of Creative Scotland’s reserves, to provide more single-year funding.
How does the current set of decisions impact on that? Will Creative Scotland still be able to fund those organisations that have not been successful in achieving multiyear funding and are still very much on the brink and in need of that year-on-year funding to survive into the next financial year?
