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 925 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
When NatureScot investigated the use of night sights and the proposed change to ammunition weights, it did not find any welfare concerns at all, over and above those that apply in relation to lamping, which is a practice for trying to see things in the dark. No additional welfare concerns were found. That has been addressed from the ammunition angle and the night-sight angle.
Of course, as Edward Mountain will know, it is always up to the practitioner not to take the shot unless it is safe to do so—unless they have a correct backstop and the animal has been correctly identified and paired up with any young that it might be responsible for. It is always up to the person who pulls the trigger to decide whether the shot is safe to take.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
That is correct.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
That is a good question. I ask Jackie Hughes to say whether that is a characteristic of Asulam.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
No, that—
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
They apply to the Health and Safety Executive.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
I have just the evidence that is in front of us, which is that Scottish Water regularly detects residues of Asulam in water supplies. As the result of one ground-spraying incident, the levels exceeded drinking water standard limits. Asulam is getting into the water table.
That relates only to Scottish Water’s responsibility, which is the public water supply. In the uplands where spraying is happening, there are many private water supplies that are not tested, so we do not know whether they are being contaminated.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
It has completed that work.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
The testing of water supplies was not one of the things that the James Hutton Institute identified, but that is an interesting point. If we take Asulam out of the system by not allowing the emergency authorisation this year, we will not expect such contamination to occur.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
That is a really good question. For the 2023 season, some people received money through AECS for chemical control. We have removed the ability for them to do that. It was agreed that those who had received funding would retain it and that they could alter their proposal. For example, if it was useful for them to use the money for mechanical control, that could be done. We allowed some flexibility to make sure that those AECS recipients could still make use of the funding that they had received. The cabinet secretary has—budgetary pressures permitting—committed to include funding for bracken control in the next round of AECS.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
I am not comfortable with the framing that the proposal will result in the killing of deer willy-nilly. That is not the situation. We are proposing to remove an administrative burden. As we have discussed, male deer are already being shot year round. People just need some paperwork in order to do that. No one is obliged to do that, but we know that land managers want and need to manage deer in that way, which is why they apply for hundreds of permits to allow them to do that every year.
The point about venison is a good one. Managing deer, which involves building and maintaining fences and hiring professionals to do the stalking, is costly and expensive. As Hugh Dignon outlined, only a very small number of carcases are left on the hillside to rot. That is not a common practice and I would not want the member to think that it was.
I have had several meetings with the venison industry about this and it did not have any particular concerns about the change to the close season. It thinks that it might even help because it will expand the shoulder seasons. The stags may be in good condition earlier in the year, which could provide a steadier stream of venison.
One of the challenges with the venison market is that it is so seasonal. Removing the close season will give land managers a bit more flexibility to be able to level out the season and make the venison market steadier and easier to handle. It will also be easier on the infrastructure that is required, such as the cool rooms and other facilities. The venison industry has not had any particular issues with the proposal and it should open up such options.
As we cull more deer in Scotland because we need to do so, that will increase the supply of venison. As I outlined earlier, we are investing in making sure the infrastructure is in place and that, as the member says, the excellent, organic, healthy meat gets on to people’s plates.
