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 2839 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Crofting and Scottish Land Court Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Jim Fairlie
There is talk about it, but there is no consensus on whether it is the right thing to do. A much bigger piece of work needs to be done to decide whether to expand beyond the crofting counties. Crofting was established in the first place because particular areas of land required intervention. I think that there has been agreement in every committee evidence session that more work needs to be done on crofting as a whole. Whether we extend croft land to other parts of Scotland should be decided in that process. I would very much push back on the aim of amendment 200 until we have clarity about whether extending crofting to other parts of Scotland is the right thing to do.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Crofting and Scottish Land Court Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Jim Fairlie
I completely understand that, but one thing that I have taken from my interaction with the crofting community is that there is a broad and diverse range of views on what people want out of crofting, and we have to give that real consideration. I point out that the work that our team has done has been phenomenal in getting us to the stage that we are at, but we are still talking about a bill that does not go nearly far enough.
If the members do not press or move their amendments, I am more than happy to have those discussions before stage 3, to see what we need to do in the next parliamentary session.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jim Fairlie
Yes. I get that some responses were not entirely supportive. We do not have all the details about why some people were not supportive of the regulations, although we can hazard a guess. However, I am confident that we have done the required work to make sure that the FPN legislation that is in front of you today is proportionate.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jim Fairlie
We will review that as we go along. I am looking at my officials, but I do not think that there is anything specific at the moment that says that we will look at them. If the SSI is approved, the fact that we have the power means that that will be a decision that will have to be taken two, five or 10 years down the line, depending on the circumstances at that time.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jim Fairlie
I will turn to Eilidh Wallace to answer those questions.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jim Fairlie
Currently, you would appeal to the authority that issued the FPN, but you would be dealing with a different person. If you wanted to appeal a notice that you had been issued by someone who had visited the farm or the hive, you would go back to the same authorising body, but a different person would consider whether the FPN was justified.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jim Fairlie
Yes, the penalties are proportionate. By and large, people do not want to commit crime—they do not want to do anything wrong. There are any number of circumstances in which people might get themselves into a difficult situation because they have not done something, perhaps because they ran out of time or because other things are going on in their lives. Proportionality is about us saying that we can impose the FPN.
I believe that the penalties are proportionate and in line with expectations. If, however, there is persistent and repeat offending, that is a different conversation. We now have an extra tool in the box—issuing an FPN—that we can use if someone does not comply. If they get it once, that will probably be more than enough, because they will have to pay money out of their pocket, which they will not want to do. I hope, however, that people will just get on with doing the things that they need to do instead of getting an FPN in the first place.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jim Fairlie
I will turn the question around. Do you have a concern about the early payment discount?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jim Fairlie
Okay. I see your point, but, as I said at the start, I hope that we will get to a position in which FPNs will not be needed, because the issues will have been resolved in the first place.
If early payment is an option, people might think, “Okay, I’ve crossed the line, so I’ll make an early payment to get this done, but I’m not going to allow it to happen again.” The SSI is not about prosecuting people for the sake of catching people; it is about allowing us to have negotiations with people in which we say, “This is the situation. This is the law that you have to comply with. We are giving you every opportunity to do that. If you do that, we’ll be fine.” We need to provide something to allow us to have that conversation.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jim Fairlie
People might be in the guts of lambing and calving, so there will be circumstances in which people physically cannot make a payment.
