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 380 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:47
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
Does Mr Eagle agree that the emphasis should be far more on working with existing landowners and encouraging them to invest in things such as the provision of additional rural housing, rather than on imposing on them ever more regulations, which will discourage investment and new tenancies, dampen the rural economy and prevent us from achieving the opportunities that exist in rural Scotland?
Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:47
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
A small number of landowners act against the interests of communities, but does Monica Lennon accept that a very large number of them often do far more to invest in, support and develop businesses, people and individuals in their communities than the public sector does? Surely, we should encourage that rather than take measures that risk that coming to an end.
Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:47
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
Will Edward Mountain give way briefly?
Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:47
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:47
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
Michael Matheson’s suspicion is correct, and I feel that I should stand by the memory of my friend, the late and much-missed Phil Gallie. To be fair to Mr Gallie, is it not the case that a provision in the 2003 act—namely, that there be retrospective changes to limited partnerships—was deemed by the courts to be confiscation of property, and therefore in breach of article 1 of the first protocol to the ECHR?
All the officials who are sitting at the back of the chamber today should be looking at their law books to see whether history will not repeat itself here.
Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:47
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
Will Michael Matheson give way?
Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:47
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:47
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
The bill proposes legal measures that would, I gather, be applied retrospectively. Is the committee at all concerned that that might contravene the European convention on human rights, as was indeed the case with the agricultural holdings legislation two decades ago—the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 2003?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
In my view, salmon farming is one of the greatest success stories in modern Scotland, yet I believe that it is the most undervalued. Furthermore, I am not aware of any other industry that is the subject of more politically motivated, unjust and ill-informed attacks than our aquaculture sector. I was pleased to hear the cabinet secretary defending the industry against some of the arguments that are so frequently made.
My patch, Inverness, has the headquarters of Gael Force Marine, which was founded 40 years ago by the then young Stewart Graham and which is now operating internationally with great success and to high standards. The industry has invested massively and arguably more than any other industry in Scotland—£1,000 million. Salmon Scotland’s briefing says that it provided evidence to the committee that the investment has resulted in a significant improvement in fish survival, as well as record low levels of sea lice. Recently published Government statistics reiterate that, but Salmon Scotland says that, sadly, the committee’s report
“did not cite this evidence that was provided by the sector and Scottish Government regulators.”
I have discussed some of the issues and achievements with industry leaders whom I know quite well from my time as cabinet secretary. I think that they need to blow their trumpet a little more loudly and frequently, because the industry has taken action to cut mortalities and successfully tackle sea lice, and, as the cabinet secretary rightly indicated, there have been matters entirely out of the industry’s control that have led to great problems. The industry has not ignored those; it has tackled them.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Fergus Ewing
I am very grateful to the cabinet secretary for giving way. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the Griggs report’s main recommendation of having a lead individual responsible for driving forward progress, as is the case in Norway, and ensuring that consents, for example, are dealt with swiftly, as they are in Norway, would help achieve the objectives that she has set out?
