Chamber and committees

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.

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.

Filter your results Hide all filters

Displaying 1144 contributions

Order by |

Meeting of the Parliament

Food and Drink Sector

Meeting date: 18 March 2025

Rhoda Grant

I was going to accept the intervention from Rachael Hamilton.

Meeting of the Parliament

Food and Drink Sector

Meeting date: 18 March 2025

Rhoda Grant

[Interruption.] My colleague behind me suggests that we should hear a bit of humility from Rachael Hamilton about clearing up the mess that was left by the previous UK Government.

It is clear that fostering international investment in key sectors is central to support for our food and drink sector. Having a good relationship with the Scotland Office and the extensive network of UK embassies worldwide can effectively promote Scottish products and services.

Meeting of the Parliament

Food and Drink Sector

Meeting date: 18 March 2025

Rhoda Grant

I am not taking any more interventions—I am running out of time.

That said, Scottish whisky already competes in a global whisky market, and we more than hold our own against whiskies from Ireland, Taiwan and Japan, to mention only a few. The Scottish Government must also publicise and promote our industry, and it needs to highlight that our whisky industry is at the forefront in trying to get to net zero. Whisky that is being distilled today will not be consumed for four years at the very earliest, and the best will age for 10, 12 or 18 years in order to receive premium prices.

Those whiskies will be sold in a world that is very different from the one that we are in today. Consumers will want to know not only the provenance, but the carbon footprint, of what they are drinking. The whisky industry cannot do that in a vacuum: it works with farmers who produce the raw material, it looks to renewable energy for its heat production and it utilises what are sometimes all-too-copious amounts of water. There are real opportunities for other industries and communities to work with the whisky sector to learn and gain from its innovation and experience.

Our Scottish salmon is another iconic product, and its worldwide recognition and trade benefits to Scotland should not be underestimated. That is why governance and oversight of the industry must improve. The Scottish Government has done nothing to streamline regulation of the industry: that regulation is clunky and time consuming. It is little wonder, therefore, that the industry is owned largely by multinationals, because they are the only ones with pockets deep enough to enable them to deal with our governance structures. The Scottish Government needs to provide better governance and transparency to allow the industry to flourish, while protecting our environment and reputation.

Our amendment highlights the Food and Drink Federation’s estimate that the sector needs nearly 35,000 new recruits by 2031 to fill its skills gap. With universities in crisis and colleges cut to the bone, it is difficult to see how we can, in any industry, provide the trained workforce that is required. The Scottish Government must ensure that our young people are equipped with the skills that the industry demands.

The motion highlights the importance of rural and island communities to the sector, so there must be better local vocational and educational opportunities to ensure that young people have the option to gain skills close to home.

Future skills must be part of an industrial strategy. In devising that strategy, we need to ask ourselves what the food and drink businesses of the future will look like, and how our workers will acquire the skills that will be needed to continue to capitalise on our excellent products and to promote that excellence.