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 450 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
The code is more than that; it is a case of a simple focused thing. I have already addressed in my opening statement the issue of the code being absorbed into the general codes. It would get lost in translation. I wanted to focus on the purchasing and acquiring of puppies in an uninformed fashion, which has been ancillary to an increase in puppy factory farms. That was not the only issue, but it was part of the issue. By making a simple code, we are dealing with a different cohort of people—people who, for good reason, want the company of a pet. We are making them focus on that. I hope that, with the code, the nature of the unlicensed puppy trade—if I may loosely call it that—will be changed.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
After consultation with the various organisations that support the bill, I decided that those were the basic questions. There might be other questions that someone else might ask. For example, someone might have a medical condition and their abilities might deteriorate over time. The questions would be different for them. The bill includes basic questions that people often do not consider, and those are the simple ones that we should start with. Where am I living? Is this the right place for a dog? What is my family like? Do I have cats? Do I have another dog?
Some people even speak to a vet before they get a pet. You do not need to put that in the bill. The questions in the bill are what should be considered, and I thought that they were good starters for 10, as it were.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
I wanted to keep the bill short, punchy and easily understood. If we want to educate people, we cannot blow the bill up and put too much in. As a former secondary school teacher, I realise that you can only teach so much in one lesson. I put in the questions that I thought were key. As I said previously, someone else might have additional questions, but the ones in the bill are the basics. It is up to the Government to add any other questions that it might consider, subject to their being within the ambit of what I already have in the bill.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
It would be the responsibility of the transferor—the person who had the dog and was transferring it to the person who was acquiring it. The certificate would be their responsibility. They would not need to have the certificate all the time, but, if an issue arose, an animal welfare organisation such as the SSPCA, which might have received a call from someone who was concerned about the welfare of a dog in a household, could ask to see the certificate.
Today, everything can be done online, or you can print things out or get them at libraries, so you could demonstrate that you had the certificate. You are supposed to do it, but this is an educational issue—it is not punitive—so there might be circumstances in which the person has not done it. There is scope in the bill and in the criminal legislation—the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006—to make an allowance if somebody has not done it, provided that the reason is not malign and the person has been negligent in a sense, but not so negligent that they deserve to be penalised for it.
In my view, in all legislation—except in road traffic legislation and so on, in which the requirement is absolute—there should be flexibility in certain circumstances, but you would have to show why you did not know about it.
The certificate requirement is about making people aware so that they have read about and done what they are supposed to do. It is a physical demonstration that they know about and have done it. Given that it is not onerous, I think that most people will be pleased to do it and will think that it is a good idea.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
Do I need a tin hat?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
First, the Government has not undertaken anything in relation to microchipping. I seem to recall, convener, that you were on the Audit Committee in 2016—I might be wrong.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
The code relates to the time of the transfer of the dog. Microchipping relates to part 2, which is on a registration system. Microchipping would not be in the code.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
Section 5, on revision of the code, says
“The Scottish Ministers may revise the code of practice as it has effect for the time being.”
They can revise the code.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
There might be circumstances in which a puppy cannot be seen with its mother, and I allow for those. The 2021 regulations set out a number of circumstances. They say:
“A puppy may only be shown to a prospective purchaser if it is together with its biological mother.”
However, that does not apply if the
“separation of the puppy from its biological mother is necessary for the health or welfare of the puppy”
or that of
“other puppies from the same litter or”—
and this is the circumstance to which you referred—
“the puppy’s biological mother is deceased.”
We can see the reasons why it would not be practicable, but they are already in regulations.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Christine Grahame
I am not forcing it.
