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 715 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
I do not have any further questions.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
My final question also relates to invasive non-native species. They are a principal driver of biodiversity loss globally, they are an intensifying issue in Scotland and they are having particularly serious impacts on islands. I am thinking specifically of projects involving highly mobile species, such as the Orkney Native Wildlife Project, that the Scottish Government funds.
Does the cabinet secretary believe that the current legal arrangements for tackling invasive non-native species are adequate? In particular, can operational staff access land with sufficient speed to eradicate highly mobile species? My point relates to Rhoda Grant’s earlier question about designating particular zones so that, where there are highly mobile species, operational staff can get access to land in order to carry out eradication.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
Thank you. I would like to take you up on the offer to meet to discuss the matter ahead of stage 2.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
It sounds as though you are saying that you support the intention behind amendment 109. I gather that the bill sets a particular direction of travel towards diversifying ownership, so it would make sense to prevent any further increases so that we do not go back on ourselves. Could an amendment be lodged to secure that direction of travel, which I think we agreed on, ahead of stage 3?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
Does that mean that you are not ruling out a future reduction in the threshold to 500 hectares?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
It is on your point about not having the evidence base to address aggregate landholdings. Will you say a little more about that? Is it not the case that the national concentration of land ownership was recognised as an issue by the Scottish Government, formed part of the consultation for the bill, but is now not being included? That seems to go against research and findings from the Scottish Land Commission. It caught my attention when you said that there is no evidence base—it is not clear to me what that statement is based on.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
Does that mean that the Government’s position has changed and that you no longer recognise national concentration of land ownership to be a problem for Scotland?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
May I ask what the member’s position is on the principle of who owns Scotland? Does he think that it is right that anyone anywhere in the world with enough money can own Scotland, while many people here do not have access to the land?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
Thank you.
If the member supports the principle of compulsory purchase and his only concern is the detail of the amendment, I would be happy to work with him between stage 2 and stage 3 in order to bring the amendment back.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Mercedes Villalba
I am pleased to speak to amendment 174 and my other amendments in the group. I thank Community Land Scotland and the Scottish Parliament legislation team for their support in drafting the amendments.
The bill as introduced includes a transfer test that does not make any assessment of the wider public interest in land ownership, nor does it assess whether the buyer or their plans for the land are in the public interest. Successive Scottish Governments have consistently made commitments to diversify land ownership patterns in Scotland but, as it stands, the transfer test in the bill is not an effective mechanism for achieving that.
In order for the test mechanism to be impactful, it must move beyond being a mere assessment of the landholding; it must instead make a forward-facing assessment of whether the landholding and the land management plan of the incoming landowners are in the public interest. That would also create coherence between the otherwise disconnected test and land management elements of the bill.
The committee heard evidence from numerous stakeholders, experts and land users that it is necessary to reframe the transfer test as a public interest test. The stage 1 report noted that the committee
“considers that the transfer test, as drafted, will not meet the aims of the Scottish Government as it does not sufficiently take account of the public interest”.
Unlike the term “community sustainability” in the bill, the term “public interest” is widely used in Scottish and UK legislation. It has more than 200 mentions in primary legislation, including in existing land reform legislation. That means that a public interest test is likely to establish a clearer precedent than a transfer test and would avoid future legal challenges. Research for the Scottish Government and the Scottish Land Commission has been clear on that.
My 174 amendment would therefore insert a forward-facing public interest test into the bill, with that test to be applied to a proposed new buyer in relation to transfers of large landholdings. Under the proposal, land being transferred would remain subject to public interest considerations and existing obligations, such as land management plans; at the same time, it would ensure that potential buyers would fulfil the land management plan obligations necessary for their ownership of the land.
The public interest test in amendment 174 and as amended by the presumed limit in amendment 174A would provide that a proposed transfer would have no effect in a situation where
“(a) section 67G ... or
(b) a lotting decision under section 67N applies to the land”,
if ministers considered that the transfer would not be in the public interest.
