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 524 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Rhoda Grant
Amendment 146 is in a similar vein to Kate Forbes’s amendment 88; mine also covers muirburn on both peatland and non-peatland. The wildfire in Cannich last year highlights the need to manage fuel load on peat as well as in other areas. It seems wrong to me that we spend money on restoring peatland only for those efforts to be ruined by an intensely burning wildfire. It is sometimes the case, therefore, that muirburn is the most effective way to manage the fuel load, and it should be used as such. Perhaps there should be a duty on land managers to manage fuel load in order to mitigate the harm caused by wildfire. The problem is that the science in this area is not yet conclusive, which makes it challenging to legislate. We need to ensure that what we put down in legislation can be adapted to fit future scientific knowledge. That said, it seems clear that leaving a large fuel load on land is dangerous. Leaving it on degraded peat is disastrous, and we have heard and seen evidence to show that muirburn has caused little harm on well-maintained peatland. My amendments acknowledge the role to be played by muirburn in peat restoration and protection.
Amendment 149 ensures that any regulations that modify the list of purposes for muirburn are subject to full consultation and scrutiny by the committee. I hope that that would give members some confidence in ensuring that any changes are fully scrutinised and will be in line with the science at the time.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Rhoda Grant
I get it that stakeholders are involved, but it does not say anywhere that the stakeholders have to agree to the code. That is why I am looking for better scrutiny. As with my other amendments, I would be happy if the minister would discuss that ahead of stage 3 to find out whether we can put something in place that will ensure that Parliament has some level of scrutiny so that, if there are concerns about the code, they could at least be heard.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Rhoda Grant
I would like clarification. You talked about consultation that takes place regularly and said that the Scottish Government would normally publish the results of such consultation. Are you committing to doing that in the future, regardless of those amendments?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2024
Rhoda Grant
It seems to me that we are talking about things that should be funded from other budgets that the bill does not really mention. However, to come back to the bill—which, after all, is what we are looking at—I wonder whether there is anything that we can put into it that would ensure fairer funding for rural areas. Lots of the things that we are talking about today would, if we were talking about urban areas, come from a different pot of money. Is there anything that we can do in the bill to ensure fairer funding for rural areas from other pots, instead of trying to carve up this particular amount of money among the competing—but real—needs in rural communities?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2024
Rhoda Grant
The bill is a framework bill, so an awful lot of legislation will come from it. Regulations could enable changes to be made to schedule 1 in relation to who can get support under the bill. Those regulations will be subject to the negative procedure. Is that the right approach? For those who do not know, the negative procedure means that the instrument is lodged in the Parliament but that, if members are against an element of it, they have to vote it down in its entirety; they cannot amend it. It is a “take it or leave it” procedure. Is that adequate, or should that be changed to enable greater scrutiny and consultation on any changes that are proposed?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2024
Rhoda Grant
I want to follow up on what people were asking about with regard to scrutiny of the support plan. There are two legislative routes, using either an affirmative instrument or a negative instrument. With the first, we would have to vote for it; with the second, we would have to move against it. Given the importance of the plan, should we be asking for a super-affirmative procedure, whereby we ask Government to lay a draft of the instrument first so that the committee can comment and consult more widely on it, and report back to Government before it submits the final instrument? That would allow time for people to feed back. Would people support that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Rhoda Grant
No concerns about that have been expressed to us, but it could be that, when the guidance is changed in the future, we do get concerns about it, especially when there is no consultation with the committee. What would we do in that case? Would the minister appear in front of the committee to discuss those concerns?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Rhoda Grant
It is good to have that backstop.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Rhoda Grant
When the island bond policy was shelved, we were assured that the £5 million would stay within the Scottish Government budget to deal with depopulation. Where is that money within the budget, and what other specific moneys are being set aside to deal with depopulation of our islands?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Rhoda Grant
On the £250,000 for looking at employment and retention on the islands, is there something similar in the budget this year? We are very aware that island businesses are struggling because of the unreliability of the ferries. What money is there to encourage those businesses to stay on island?
