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 1228 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Building Safety
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Ivan McKee
Does anyone else have thoughts on that? If not, thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Building Safety
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Ivan McKee
Okay. Following on from that, when the cabinet secretary announced the accord, she said that, if necessary, she would
“make full use of the powers available to us to bring parties to the table, including if necessary, using legislation to do so.”
Do you think that it is time for the Scottish Government to look at the legislative route?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Building Safety
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Ivan McKee
Is it necessary to have the accord in place to deliver on that?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Ivan McKee
As laid out in the register of members’ interests, my interests relate to the ownership of some rental properties.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Building Safety
Meeting date: 18 April 2023
Ivan McKee
I welcome the panel. As the convener indicated, I would like to ask for witnesses’ views about the likely success of the Scottish safer buildings accord. It would appear that some progress has been made on negotiations between the Government and developers, but our understanding is that they have reached a deadlock. I would like your perspective on where the accord is and on the likelihood of its success.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Ivan McKee
Yes, of course I am. We are focused on doing everything that we can but, as we already identified, many of the levers for Scotland’s general energy policy are reserved, so the challenge is what we can do there. It is about building those supply chains in an environment where there is uncertainty at a macroeconomic level, a lack of support and challenges on the skills side. Cost pressures are obviously difficult, but we are in this for the long haul and we are working with those businesses to strengthen the supply chains and take advantage of the significant spend that is coming Scottish businesses’ way, through the work that we have done with developers to roll out the ScotWind projects.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Ivan McKee
Aye, so—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Ivan McKee
I will let Dermot Rhatigan talk specifically on timber and the broader stuff that we are doing in that regard. Timber is one of the areas of focus in the supply chain development programme. In Scotland, we manufacture more of our housing stock from timber than is the case in the rest of the UK. We see opportunities to do more of that and to increase embodied carbon. There are technical issues, but Built Environment-Smarter Transformation, or BE-ST, which is the construction innovation centre over in Blantyre, is leading the way on research, and is working with universities and others on mass laminated products and other products that can be utilised more extensively in the supply chain.
I have engaged with sawmills and others on what they can do to increase output. One of the challenges that we have with timber is that it has probably the longest lead time of any item—it has a 30-year lead time—which means that we will not see the results of any decisions that are made now for a very long time. I should say, though, that Scotland’s forest coverage continues to increase, which is to be welcomed.
It is perhaps worth mentioning other factors that highlight the complexity of this issue. For a start, there is the clear biodiversity challenge of which species you choose to grow, given that what you grow in order to mass produce housing stock, say, might not be what you need to grow for other purposes or might not be part of the balance that you would want from a biodiversity point of view. Those things have to be considered, too, and they are part of what we need to think about with regard to native species. We are all committed to getting that balance right.
Further downstream, there is also the work that is being taken forward by my colleague Patrick Harvie and others on heat in buildings and the decarbonisation of property as part of the net zero agenda. Making changes to regulations to encourage the Scottish supply chain will, of course, be a factor, but the primary concern will be changes that deliver the best cost-effective solution to the net zero challenge. Getting that balance right is something that we are working on across Government, but all of that work is happening so that we can move forward as fast as we can within the current constraints.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Ivan McKee
Far be it from me to criticise the minister with responsibility for that policy area. I think that what the Minister for Transport said stands, but I will ask Andy Park to comment more specifically on the projects.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Ivan McKee
As I have indicated, the matter is outside my portfolio, and I do not want to comment on it without having the full information. The Minister for Transport has commented on it, and I will invite her to respond to your specific questions. I will do that as a matter of course following the meeting. If you want to put a request in writing, I am sure that she will be delighted to answer your questions.
