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 1144 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
You say that the independent validation will be reported at the end of this year. How long do you expect that validation to take? Can the industry expect changes to be rolled out at the end of this year? How long will it take to have the independent validation?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
When you say that the principle should be socialised and perhaps more balanced, the fact is that, in practice, you are not sure. I suppose that I am trying to get to the bottom of what you thought was wrong in that respect.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
So, given where the tensions lie, that approach might not solve the problem.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
When do you expect those trials to conclude? When will you be changing the system?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
Your report highlighted the need for “horizon scanning syntheses” to provide advance warning of environmental issues and the impacts of climate change, as well as economic shocks. How can the industry, academia and Government work together to future proof the industry against those risks?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
Do you think that the precautionary principle is influencing the consenting process at the moment? Are we being too careful? Do things have to change?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
Okay.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
Salmon Scotland has raised concerns that SEPA is not meeting acceptable timeframes for reviewing information that has been submitted as part of a pre-application process. It has also told the committee that it is not able to identify any progress towards implementing the recommendations in the Griggs review, and that the consenting process remains long and complex. What are your current response times? How would you respond to Salmon Scotland’s concerns?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 19 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
Distribution of support funding is disproportionately targeted at large farms. The £1 million funding pot actually equates to £143 per year for the small producers that are registered. Large farms receive £223 per hectare per animal, which shows the discrepancy in the funding. What action is the Scottish Government taking to ensure fair distribution of support?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3
Meeting date: 18 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
No, it would not, because the bill already allows for that. Amendment 57 is about production of fuel on arable land.
Amendments 6 and 7 attempt to take a similar approach on forestry. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for her assistance with the amendments. Grants for forestry are available elsewhere, but the growth of carbon trading is leading to forestry being planted on arable land and other land that should be used for food production. We need to ensure that no public money encourages that process. My amendments 6 and 7 seek to do that.
Amendment 1 would simply add production of herbs to the list of activities that can be supported by the rural support plan.
I have concerns about the cabinet secretary’s amendment 15, which will remove the word “edible” from the description of “horticulture”. I seek her reassurance that that will not create a loophole for energy production to become the primary purpose of farming within a rural support plan.
Although I am supportive of the aims of amendment 59, I do not believe that regulation of assistance to buy land should lie within the bill. It should lie within the land fund, which recently had its budget cut by the Government of which Ariane Burgess’s party was so recently a member.
On amendment 70, I again seek reassurance that agricultural funding will not be used to pay large estates to manage their deer numbers. They should do so at their own expense. Frankly, if we are now at the stage at which lairds need to be paid to manage their deer numbers, we should examine our poaching laws rather than protecting deer for the elite.
I move amendment 57.
