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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 647 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
Cabinet secretary, you have described the Government’s position as a “risk-based precautionary approach”, but the precautions are applied to justify an existing measure, which evidence suggests is the wrong approach and is ineffective. They are not applied to address the known principal source of mortality, which, in this case, is the nephrops trawl. Will you explain the approach?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
Can you explain why a period of three years is needed? It has been suggested that one year would be a much better option than blocking things off for three years.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
Cabinet secretary, you have referred to other vessels coming in. What if there is no closure in place? What evidence is there outwith the closure period of vessels coming in? I do not have any idea of what we are talking about in that respect.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
I am not sure that I understand. I do not think that that answers my question. I am trying to understand how many vessels there might be. Do you know the quantity of vessels that could come in, or are you saying that these are open seas and that anybody could come in? Is that it?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
Just for clarification, are you saying that the science programme is focusing on bycatch rather than seabed disturbance?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
But what about the emphasis on disturbance of the seabed and its impact on spawning? Where does that feature?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Crofting and Scottish Land Court Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
I will speak to amendments 29, 31 to 33 and 37. Amendment 37 seeks to remove section 10, which would have prohibited transfers of owner-occupier crofts to non-natural persons. That would have prevented, for example, community landlords from purchasing an owner-occupier croft and then reletting it or selling it to a new entrant or another crofter. My other amendments in the group will ensure that, although a non-natural person can hold title to a croft, they cannot acquire owner-occupier status.
Amendment 29 modifies section 19B of the 1993 act, which defines who can be an owner-occupier crofter. The first condition of owner-occupier status is that a person who becomes the owner after the relevant date—the date on which this part of the bill comes into force—must be an individual, meaning a natural person.
Amendments 31, 32 and 33 make further consequential changes to section 19B of the 1993 act to ensure that, if the croft is sold on to a natural person, it can once again be an owner-occupier croft. Of course, if it is let to a natural person, it will simply become a tenanted croft. Amendment 31 would ensure that, if a non-natural person buys a croft after the relevant date, an individual who later buys it from them can still meet the second condition for owner-occupier status. That applies as long as the non-natural person bought the croft from either an owner-occupier or from the constituting landlord. That status would also pass to the individual’s successors in title.
Amendment 32 makes it clear that, for a person to acquire owner-occupier status in those circumstances, the croft must not have been let to any crofter since it was acquired by the non-natural person. Amendment 33 will ensure that the definition of owner applies to the first and second conditions for owner-occupier crofter status in section 19B of the 1993 act.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Crofting and Scottish Land Court Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
My amendment 168 would allow a crofter to fulfil their duties under section 5C(2) of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993, as amended by section 1 of the bill, with the assistance of family or hired labour. The current law lacks certainty with regard to the involvement of other family members or hired labour, following the removal of the explicit wording in that regard from schedule 2 to the 1993 act, and the Law Society of Scotland has suggested that amendment 168 would provide certainty by inserting such language into the 1993 act.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Crofting and Scottish Land Court Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Beatrice Wishart
I will speak to amendment 86. Section 24 of the bill introduces a right for croft landlords to comment on a croft registration application before it is submitted to the commission. It is intended that that voluntary process will support greater accuracy in the croft maps that are submitted for registration. Amendment 86 would extend the period for the landlord to comment from 14 days to 21 days, which would provide a more realistic timeframe for a review of the application.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Beatrice Wishart
Good morning. My question is about the uptake of low-carbon measures. We heard at the evidence session a couple of weeks ago that there does not seem to be a clear idea of mitigation measures that would be implemented on farms and crofts to reduce emissions. The witness from the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society highlighted that a list of mitigation measures is missing. Will you explain why there is not a list of mitigation measures in the draft CCP?
