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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 2341 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Willie Coffey
I have a couple of questions. The first one continues the discussion on the impact on rural communities, and the second will be on costs that are likely to come up.
What impacts would the proposed legislation have on, for example, a small rural business in south-west Scotland or the Highlands, compared with a business in the city of Edinburgh? Should the proposed licensing scheme apply in both locations and circumstances? Maybe David Weston and Amanda Cupples could respond to that first.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
Good morning. I listened carefully to Colin Beattie’s line of questioning in which he asked where the problems arose. In his opening remarks, Malcolm Mathieson said that many of them arose from unusual legislation. I will go back to that for a moment in order to allow him to elaborate on that for the record, and to make it clear to the committee and everyone else whether he is saying that the problems in the Crofting Commission arose from dysfunctional legislation, management failures or a bit of both.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
Is the crofting community itself seeing the benefit of achievement of the recommendations or is it to early to tell? Are the changes and recommendations mostly structural and internal? When will people see the benefits of achievement of what is in the improvement plan?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
I recognise that point about travel—I am one of those people who no longer need to run up the M77 and the M8 every day to come to Parliament, which is a huge advantage for me.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
What is the position now? Has the commission said to the Government that the legislation is perhaps not fit for purpose?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
I will finish by following up on the questions that Richard Leonard asked about the improvement plan and looking to the future.
There have been several mentions of the recommendations and the fact that 33 out of 41 recommendations have been achieved. Who agrees that those have been achieved?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
I have a final question. Will Deloitte conduct a follow-up audit to check whether it agrees that the recommendations have been completed satisfactorily?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
Good morning to everyone on the panel. Given where we are, it is probably too early to gaze ahead beyond the pandemic, but I invite Mary Morgan and Caroline Lamb to say a few words about the remobilisation plan that they have been asked to work on.
Mary, in your opening remarks, you gave us some great examples of the achievements that we have seen, and you particularly mentioned the digital aspect, such as the use of Teams. As part of the remobilisation plan and getting back to business as usual, will we retain some of those good elements of practice which, although they were forced on us, have turned out to be very advantageous for the way in which we and your staff work? Could you give us a flavour of how you see that going ahead? Will we retain the best of what came out as a result of Covid?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
That is pretty amazing, actually. The technology worked with 900 people online at the same time, did it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Willie Coffey
You make a great point that we had to develop new skills and expertise pretty rapidly as a consequence of the situation we found ourselves in. Do you feel that, rather than it being a one-off followed by a return to normal, you will be retaining, enhancing and embracing all those skills and that expertise as best you can? I imagine that it will inevitably lead to changes in how you and your staff want to work and that you will be embedding those practices, skills and experience?
