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 2831 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Colin Beattie
It is clear that that is an on-going issue. How will the situation be resolved? Is dialogue taking place between the interested parties? How will that play out?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Colin Beattie
A key development that has taken place since the publication of the REC Committee report is the introduction of SEPA’s new fin-fish aquaculture regulatory framework, which came in on 1 June 2019. That brought in a new and tighter standard for organic waste deposited by fish farms. What key actions has the industry made to address the environmental issues related to waste and chemical discharges that were identified by the RECC inquiry?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Colin Beattie
Yes. I am sure that somebody will be picking that up.
The Scottish Government’s analysis as part of its consultation on new standards for the use of emamectin benzoate found that farmers generally prefer to use the chemical as an in-feed medicine, because it is easy to administer and does not require fish to undergo special handling and all the rest of it. The industry expressed concern about the potential for tighter standards around its use, because that would have a negative impact on fish welfare and mortality. Do you still have those concerns?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Colin Beattie
The point that was made was that jellyfish tend to form a cloud, for want of a better word. There will be a whole pack of them together. The power stations boast that, in the aggregate, they can track almost anything.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Colin Beattie
SEPA collects it, but does not publish it. Therefore, the only publicly available information is from the companies.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Colin Beattie
You talked about bringing in other medicines or chemicals to act with emamectin. Would that create another problem?
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2024”
Meeting date: 26 September 2024
Colin Beattie
It is a bit disappointing that, although we have been raising the matter as a committee for quite a few years now, we have never had a solid response from Audit Scotland on whether it needs more powers to be able to enforce and mandate public bodies to participate in this important exercise. You say that you have enough powers, but you have not actually analysed the market out there to determine gaps that you would need to fill, which might need more powers. You said that only half of the ALEOs are taking part, so it seems that there are a lot of gaps. Either you are not using your present powers to the level that you should be, or you do not have the powers to do that and, therefore, you need your hand strengthened.
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2024”
Meeting date: 26 September 2024
Colin Beattie
So, 100 per cent of those provide that data.
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2024”
Meeting date: 26 September 2024
Colin Beattie
Thanks, convener. The 2022 report on the NFI talked about a Cabinet Office consultation on extending legal powers in relation to the purposes for which data matching was used. You are already covered under section 97 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 for prevention and detection of crime other than fraud and to assist in the apprehension and prosecution of offenders. Is Audit Scotland satisfied that it has the necessary legislative powers to undertake the NFI exercise effectively?
This committee, over a number of years, has expressed concerns about the number of public bodies that are in receipt of large sums of money but which do not participate and have determined not to voluntarily participate. Can you give us a little bit more information about what you need? We have asked you directly in the past, every time a report has come up, about what you would need in the way of legislative powers to extend the NFI more effectively in Scotland. To be honest, the responses have been pretty ambivalent.
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2024”
Meeting date: 26 September 2024
Colin Beattie
The fact is that those ALEOs are in receipt of substantial sums of public funds, but you have no powers to mandate their participation. Is that not a shortfall in your legislative powers?
