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 622 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
Thank you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
That seems to be fair. There has also been discussion about compensation and “hope value”, and I can understand why. If a tenant were to have done something, resumption could mean the owner making a profit from somebody else’s endeavours. If the hope value were available to tenants to realise, would that need to be considered when looking at compensation—for example, if the tenant could do the development that the landowner intends to do and profit from it themselves?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
They could be working on a similar proposal. The tenant might think, “Here’s an opportunity for me. I’m going to do this—I’m going to develop it and I am going to make a profit.” The landowner might see that and think, “Actually, I could do that on an even bigger scale if I resume that piece of land and do it with some of my own land”, and therefore stop the tenant from realising the benefit.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
That would be useful.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
That situation is likely to be where conflicts would arise.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
A croft is an agricultural landholding—although it comes under different legislation, obviously.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
We have had some discussion about a transfer test versus a public interest test, which has all been geared towards communities buying land. However, I wonder whether anyone who is buying large tracts of land should face a public interest test. There is nothing in the bill that insists that a new owner follows the land management plan. Given the power and control that owners of large land holdings can have, should whether they will manage the land in the public interest be considered before they buy land?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
I argue that crofters have agricultural landholdings.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Inshore Fisheries Management Improvement Programme
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
There has been a lot of chat about co-management. Given what you have said, I am keen to learn what co-management means in practice and how—or whether—it will lead to decentralised decision making.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Inshore Fisheries Management Improvement Programme
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
Rhoda Grant
It seems to me that there is a source of free information that is being totally ignored. The fishers want to be part of decision making, but they also have a huge amount of information that would be useful to you. How do you capture that? People who are working for themselves do not often have time to go to association meetings or join associations. Your job must be to make it easier for them to engage, and I wonder how that can happen.
