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 2667 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
The Scottish Government puts out regular social media posts on various platforms.
If members are on social media and see them, I ask them to please get the posts out there, because farmers will be following your accounts and that helps us to get the information out to people as and when events are happening. It is useful for people to know about them, and we want to encourage people in relation to them.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
They are already doing that and we are already having those conversations. The code will be there as a document at a later point, but right now we are having conversations about what we are looking to do. We are talking about sustainable and regenerative agriculture. We just talked about the peer-to-peer conversations that are being had. That is all in development.
I would like people to remember that we are at the very early stages of this transition. Some people are miles ahead and others are just coming to it. It is not a final piece of work. We are continuing to develop it as we go along. It will depend on where people are picking up the process and where they find themselves at this moment in time.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
You put it far better than I could have put it myself. Yes—that is exactly what it will be. It is about working with, and developing processes for, the sector so that it knows exactly what will allow it to get into that sustainable and regenerative agriculture that we are all trying to get to.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
No, I have not considered that at this stage, if I am absolutely honest. I have not thought about what that will do. Plenty of farmers would not agree with what you have just said. I take your point on board, but I cannot give any guarantees on what you have asked.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
The code will give people the template to work to on what they are being asked to do—
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
Yes, it will.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
All those things are being taken into consideration. I was just trying to find a list of all the work, but James Muldoon has covered most of it. We have had feedback from the NFUS and ARIOB. A whole host of things are happening in that space.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
There is physical, IT and community support. Although I said that I am not giving you a financial commitment, that support could be taken as a financial commitment because it costs money to provide it. The support is there and is being discussed, and I am more than happy to continue that conversation.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
I probably do.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Jim Fairlie
They can do free of charge a lot of the things that we are asking. They do not necessarily have to pay out money. They can do things themselves. Recently, I spoke to a crofter who had been to his local RPID office and had asked, “This is what’s coming. How do I go about it?” He was given help and support by that office. There are lots of things that crofters can do independently; they do not have to do the financial bits that will cost them a lot of money. However, we want them to be a part of the process.
