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 1067 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Ivan McKee
I will respond to the committee and let it know the outcome of that inquiry. As I have said, if a local authority decides to purchase something, we are not in a position to tell it where it should buy it from. If we did that, others would say that we should not be doing that. I have written very clearly and strongly to make those points to all public sector authorities, and I would be very happy to update the committee on any responses that we receive in that regard.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Supply Chain
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Ivan McKee
A big focus of the transition is on the modal shift in transport and the net zero impacts of that. In our recent report on Scotland’s electric vehicle charging market, we identified what needs to be done, but we also very much recognise that that needs to be done in partnership with the private sector. Given the investment required, the public sector can do part of the work, but the bulk of it will need to be done by the private sector.
As a result, “A Network Fit For The Future: Draft Vision for Scotland’s Public Electric Vehicle Charging Network” not only sets out our ambition to work with the private sector to develop the charging network but makes clear what would be commercially viable for the private sector to pick up itself and the gaps that the public sector would then need to fill. We have also, as part of that work, announced the electric vehicle infrastructure fund, which has £60 million of target investment.
However, you are right to suggest that that work needs to move forward if we are to enable that modal shift to happen. We absolutely understand that, and we need to work with the private sector to ensure that the investment is in place to deliver on that.
Does Andy Park want to comment?
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
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
There is concern from Wales. The Welsh Government has not recommended consent either, on that basis.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
I will let officials comment on that, but, as I have said, my experience has been that engagement at ministerial level sometimes resolves things and sometimes it does not, but until you have the conversation, it is difficult to know the UK Government’s position.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
The bill will be taken through in the rest of this year. We obviously want this to be resolved sooner rather than later.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
It needs to be somebody who understands Scottish Government policy and the context within which we operate—somebody who understands our national strategy for economic transformation, our net zero activity, our global capital investment plan, our focus on infrastructure, our strategic transport plan and so on, and who is able to make the case as to why and how the infrastructure bank’s investments should be aligned with those priorities.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
I am not sure whether Wales has made exactly the same case. It can speak for itself.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Procurement Bill
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Ivan McKee
On the first point, as I said, the current situation is that Scottish law places requirements on bodies that are in devolved areas and bodies that are in reserved or cross-border areas are not included in that. This bill would cover them, so there is a different scope there.
On the practical effects, the problem is that the bill confers powers that could allow UK Government ministers to make changes to acts of the Scottish Parliament, so it is pretty broad and could cover a wide range of areas. The concern, therefore, is that we do not know whether it could have an impact, but it opens a door and what the UK Government chose to do with it would be a concern. We see issues because of the way in which the bill has been drafted and because it confers those powers. From our perspective, it is not acceptable for UK Government ministers to have the power to make changes to acts of the Scottish Parliament.
