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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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
So, this will be at the end of the process rather than at the start.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
Some stakeholders have expressed concern about the levels of competence that are required, especially for people who are new to the industry, to be able to stalk at night or shoot deer in woodland. They felt that the competence and training required were not really adequate. They felt that new stalkers with the proposed level of training could be reasonably dangerous in some situations. Has thought been given not so much to those with a huge amount of experience but to those who are coming into the industry, and to providing bespoke training for the more difficult situations such as night stalking and stalking in woodland?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
As part of the panel of advisers, NatureScot would obviously be giving advice, but anybody else on that panel would know that, at the end of the day, it is the regulator. That would create a bit of an imbalance on the panels, because the gamekeeper, who will be making sure that everybody else complies with whatever comes out of that panel’s advice, will also be sitting on the panel. It just seems that that would set an imbalance for people.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
I guess that the conflict lies in the fact that an advisory panel gives advice and it is up to Government whether it takes that advice. If the advice was different from the decision that was made, NatureScot would still have to police compliance with that, even though the panel obviously did not agree with the decision or want it to be implemented.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
Yes, but if its advice is different from the action that is taken, how can you then say that it is an impartial enforcer?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
Is there a way of using some of those infrastructure improvements for other meat, such as beef, lamb and chicken? Meat travels a huge number of food miles, so could we try to keep all of it within local food chains?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
I have heard some concerns in that regard. Is the cabinet secretary willing to look at them and discuss the issue ahead of stage 3, to see whether we can find a way that gives people comfort?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
The definition of land that is of community significance is widely recognised. One thing that is missing from the bill is urban land reform. Michael Matheson’s amendments are proportionate and would give people in urban and, indeed, rural areas an opportunity to do something about bad management of land that is of significance to them.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
I can understand to an extent why the cabinet secretary does not want a description of “public interest” to be in the bill. However, there should surely be a reference to it in the bill so that the whole bill uses that framework, which is legally understood. Would she consider lodging an amendment, in discussion with other members who have lodged amendments, that would cover the whole bill, so that all the actions under the bill would be taken in the public interest?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Rhoda Grant
Amendment 339 would make land management plans subject to a public interest test, requiring landowners to consider the public interest when pursuing such plans. Owning large areas of land is a privilege and therefore large landowners need to consider the impact of their activities on the wider public when drawing up their land management plans.
Amendment 342 seeks to expand the definition of land that is subject to obligations under proposed new section 44A of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 to include public interest determinations. It would also add public interest criteria for applying land management obligations and would allow the Government to impose public goods obligations on large landowners. Too often, we hear of communities that cannot access land for vital community interests such as housing and food production. The amendment would empower the Government to step in where community efforts have failed.
Amendment 348 is a technical amendment that is consequential to amendment 342 and would include proposed new section 44D to the 2016 act in the list of relevant sections.
I support other amendments in the group from Mercedes Villalba, Michael Matheson and Ariane Burgess. It is clear that we need a public interest test for many aspects of the bill for the reasons that Mark Ruskell has laid out, which I will not repeat. I look forward to hearing the cabinet secretary’s thoughts on which amendments would best do that.
