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 1576 contributions
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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
I declare not so much an interest as an appreciation of what you have said, given that I live in a place where, when I look out of my window, I sometimes feel as though I am in a Hitchcock film, so great is the number of greylag geese that are landing around my house.
Could you explain why the problem with geese is a particular problem in crofting areas? Not everyone appreciates the degree to which crofters are part time and the pressures that there are on their time. Could you say something about the scale of the task that would face a crofter or a village in trying to deal with the issue without external assistance?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Crisis in Ukraine: Impact on Food Supply Chain in Scotland
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
We are talking about the impact of the war in Ukraine, but I would like us to rewind slightly and look at the resilience of food production in Scotland prior to that shock. Can you say a little about existing food resilience in Scotland—perhaps you can break it down by sector—and what the options are for strengthening it? Several of the witnesses may want to respond, but that question is probably for Scott Walker and Steven Thomson, in the first instance.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Crisis in Ukraine: Impact on Food Supply Chain in Scotland
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
A number of people have mentioned the importance of preparing the supply chain for the future. Can Professor Matthews offer any observations about Ireland or from it on what, if anything, differs in the ways that Scotland and Ireland are preparing for the future in that respect? I am thinking specifically about making the supply chain more resilient.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Crisis in Ukraine: Impact on Food Supply Chain in Scotland
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
I say “unusual”. We have just had a discussion about greylag geese and I have a question about food resilience. I do not know whether you were listening in, but we talked about creating a potential market for greylag geese given their prevalence on the west coast of Scotland. There is also a question about species such as venison. Why is the UK a net importer of venison? I do not pretend that those two species would ever make us a food-resilient nation, but there may be other examples, and I wonder whether you have a view on that.
That question is for anyone who wants to go first.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
On your point about cars, I have had people put it to me that geese can recognise number plates. [Laughter.] However, the serious point around that is the one that you have just made, which is that there is a dramatic change in the number of greylag geese landing on crofts. Can you say a bit about what it is that greylag geese do when they land on a croft?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Crisis in Ukraine: Impact on Food Supply Chain in Scotland
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
My question was intended to be about unusual species, as it were. Does that tie in?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund
Meeting date: 27 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
Will the member take an intervention?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
You mentioned housing. Will you say a bit more about the situation that some local authorities, and presumably housing associations, are in with regard to putting a figure on the number of houses that may be available? That is certainly something that hosts have asked me about. They are happy to be hosts, but they are not always entirely clear on how many houses might eventually be made available. Is COSLA beginning to put figures on that for all local authority areas?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
Hazel Chisholm mentioned some of the challenges that rural local authorities face in assessing houses that have been volunteered and so on. Can you say a bit more about what kind of work is being done or needs to be done to plan the support that will be needed for families once they arrive and the challenges that rural areas might face in doing that?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Alasdair Allan
My question is for Gayle Findlay, and is about the response of local authorities to volunteers. You have already explained something about that relationship and the work that local authorities are doing. Are you picking up on a hunger for information from the volunteers, from any source? I think that the Home Office has provided quite limited acknowledgements of those offers of help. Clearly, local authorities are doing their best to get around all the people and to check houses. Is there a bit of frustration among volunteer hosts that they do not seem to have heard much back from the Home Office? Certainly, some people have been in touch to put that point to me.
