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 3061 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
I am not involved in the investigation of wildlife crime.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
Actually, that is not the case. In the previous session of Parliament, when we were considering the Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Bill, we heard from a wildlife officer at a round-table session; of the members here today, I think that it was only me and Mr Carson who were at that meeting. There is already a strong relationship between the police and the SSPCA. The wildlife officer at that meeting recognised that there could be an issue with hiding or removing evidence, and they said that it would be regrettable if somebody from the SSPCA were called to a scene and could not gather evidence that would help the investigation.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
They want the protocols to be established.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
As Hugh Dignon has said, this is a compromise position, because people wanted us to go further in this area. I think that that is where a lot of the police criticism has come from—it was about the other position that we were taking, which would have given far more powers to the SSPCA.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
You make a really good point about smaller landowners and crofters who might have to apply for a licence. I would expect NatureScot to take that into consideration and that, when it liaises with stakeholders, it would speak to crofters about how the scheme might impact on them. It should do the same as it puts the licensing scheme together. Again, the scheme cannot be onerous: it cannot place a series of requirements on crofters to prove, measure or provide evidence of things that do not even apply to their land. It would be ridiculous, frankly, if that were the case.
I come back to what I said earlier. I have listened to NatureScot, and I very much get the impression that it wants to work with all sectors that might be affected by the licensing scheme, so it must have buy-in and the application process must not be onerous for people.
Lots of things in the code of practice will not apply to certain landowners, so I come back to the idea that the code should require people to have due regard to items in it rather than the idea that every single item in the code will be relevant to a crofter. Some parts of the code will be relevant to crofters and other parts will be completely irrelevant, so that must be taken into account. The code must be meaningful, must work for everyone who engages in muirburn and must have buy-in from them all.
You mentioned the science and the evolving data. The licensing scheme will enable data to be collected, and that information will be provided to people involved in various scientific efforts relating to peatland, in particular. It will be very helpful to have information on what is happening where, because we do not know what is happening where in relation to muirburn practices on peatland. That will allow us to give evidence to anybody who wants to undertake a scientific survey on the effect of muirburn on peatland. We cannot pre-empt that and say what the effect is—it might be positive or negative—but the code needs to provide flexibility so that NatureScot can react to the evolving science. I cannot look into the future to see what the data will show, but the fact that we will have a licensing scheme that will provide better data on what is happening where might allow the science to develop in a way that has not been possible so far.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
No.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
If we were to be more definitive than that—
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
It comes back to my answer to Rhoda Grant about crofters. The guidance must take into account the different types and acreage of land.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
Peatburn is something else.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Gillian Martin
Yes, I think that that is something that we can look into—if it has not already been done. I can check. A number of things might already have been done in that area, but we will look into that.
