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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Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
Agriculture funding is paid to devolved Governments under historical EU settlements rather than through the Barnett formula. That formula sees Scotland receive about 17 per cent of agriculture funding due to the greater proportion of farming and crofting land. Does the cabinet secretary recognise that cutting the agriculture budget could put the payment framework in jeopardy and that it certainly does not help those of us who are making the case for a greater share of that funding?
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
Homes are needed to retain populations, yet the Government’s promised priority for rural housing also includes commuter towns. Highland Council’s report tells us that the cost of building a standard two or three-bedroom property in Highland exceeds £400,000, but the Government’s grant for council house building is less than £98,000 per house.
Depopulation leads to service breakdown. In many rural areas, there is no available home care for elderly people. Does the Deputy First Minister agree that the Government’s intervention has been totally inadequate to date? Will she now act to save those communities?
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to the recent report by Highland Council, which reportedly warns of a “significant risk” of parts of its region being “drained” of people. (S6F-02648)
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
We should be clear that the code of practice will be subject to the negative procedure. The Government will devise the code, which means that, although the Government can consult on it, it will simply be laid before Parliament; if the Parliament does not like it, we will have to lodge a motion to annul. It is my understanding, because it is one of the bill’s objectives, that the whole funding package for farming depends on the code of practice being in place. That would make it very difficult for a committee to annul it, because doing so might delay support for farming.
There are other procedures that can be used. There is the affirmative procedure, under which the legislation is laid and voted on by Parliament, again on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, while other pieces of legislation have been subject to what we call a super-affirmative procedure. Under that, a draft is laid before Parliament; the committee scrutinises it and then makes comments back to the Government; and the Government either takes or does not take the committee’s comments on board before we vote on it.
Those are what you might call the different tests. I suppose that I am asking you whether the negative process, which can involve a move to annul, is sufficient for any legislation on which farming payments depend. Should we look at using the super-affirmative procedure for those parts of the legislation, the codes and so on that are coming through via subordinate legislation if farming payments are dependent on them?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
I fear that this conversation will be a wee bit like the last one in that some people are telling us that they want the wording in the bill because they need to know what to expect and others are telling us to leave it for the code of practice because that can be changed over time. Secondary to that, does the bill provide the right level of scrutiny for the code of practice?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
Section 10 is entitled “Refusal or recovery of support where in the public interest”. What does that include? When would funding be refused or recovered?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
I have a tiny supplementary question on that. You talked about the sunset clause and when the support plan has to be put in place. Should we use the bill to remove the sunset clause to give more time to ensure that we do not end up with unintended consequences?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with its enterprise agencies regarding how to support innovation by small businesses, including in relation to the use of alternative fuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil. (S6O-02865)
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
HVO can be sustainably sourced and stocked in Scotland, and its use allows companies such as Highland Fuels to provide renewable and sustainable replacements for fossil fuels to businesses and homes in the Highlands and Islands that are off gas grid and poorly insulated. As part of the policy statement, what steps are the Government and its enterprise agencies taking to widen its availability through local production and distribution?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Scottish Biodiversity Strategy (Draft Delivery Plan)
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Rhoda Grant
My questions are on the same theme, so I will not introduce them. I was interested to hear about the lack of a socioeconomic impact assessment. We are all committed to a just transition. Can we have one without the other? If you do not know the impact of what you are doing, how can you transition?
