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 831 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
You have given us a clear picture of some of the challenges that you think that there are sector by sector in achieving our shared aims in emissions reduction. In what you have said so far, you have been concentrating on examples of what is happening and the challenges ahead, so it is perhaps more difficult to tell how far you have to go and what mainstreaming would look like in your sector. What would the mainstreaming of the things that we are trying to achieve with carbon emissions look like in your sector, and how far away is it?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
I asked Jim Walker what the distance was to mainstream. I do not know what the distance is to the end of his contribution, but maybe he can address that point before he finishes.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
I am sorry to interrupt, but I think that you misunderstood my question—perhaps I did not put it very well. My point is that the animals cannot be just grass fed. In terms of livestock, you cannot have agriculture, as anyone would understand it, without bringing in feed to island and west coast areas. It cannot be done—there would be no livestock.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
I have a great deal of sympathy with what you are all saying. My point was anticipated by Professor Smith, who talked about how European countries manage the issue. NRK in Norway—I do not know whether you were possibly alluding to another country—has several national radio stations for different types of music, so you can listen at any time of day to jazz, classical or folk music, as well as a news channel and so on. Is it realistic for BBC Scotland to try to shove all that stuff into, essentially, one frequency? Why are we not looking to have more frequencies with more diversity of music, instead of trying to save a couple of hours a week?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
You were talking about multiple frequencies and so on.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC (Digital-first Agenda)
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
The BBC in Scotland has a fantastic resource in the form of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Is BBC Radio Scotland making any significant use of that resource? Is a place being given, or should more of a place be given, to the orchestra’s output?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
I will address my question to Donald MacKinnon. One thing that often gets lost in the debate is how modest crofter incomes are. Could you say a bit about making crofter incomes more viable through a new form of agriculture, where that balance would lie and what we should be doing to recognise the environmental benefits of crofting?
On the back of that, Pete Ritchie raised an interesting point, which you might want to talk about, about prioritising grass-fed livestock. How practical would such a policy be in large parts of the crofting counties?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
A completely different issue that was raised by the consul was the question of people who are looking for employment in Scotland and who feel, with some justification, that they are underemployed, perhaps because their qualifications have not been recognised so that they can work here. Again, I realise that some of this touches on reserved matters, but I am interested to know what progress there has been in that conversation about ensuring mutual recognition of qualifications, where possible, to allow employment.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Crisis in Ukraine
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
One issue that has been raised by the Scottish Refugee Council is arrivals and welcoming people effectively in a way that provides some of the information that we are talking about. I realise that some of this involves the co-operation of the UK Border Force, but the Scottish Refugee Council mentioned the lack of predictability of arrivals being one of the main challenges: it no longer receives any information from the UK Border Force and, therefore, has no access to pre-arrival information. I realise that that is for the UK Border Force to organise, but where does the Scottish Government come into the greeting and arrival process, and are you trying to overcome some of those co-ordination challenges?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Alasdair Allan
Likewise, I think that the issues in the petition were given a good hearing today and that we can give a more comprehensive hearing to the wider issues in the committee’s later work. That makes the case for closing the petition.
