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 2165 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
We would want to ensure that, as far as possible, we are not developing the plans and doing everything in a silo. It makes sense that those things align.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
Bylaws are in operation in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park. It is important that our parks have the ability to deal with particular issues. I know that the committee heard evidence from the national parks about that. We are considering a bylaw on fire management for the Cairngorms national park, given some of the significant issues that we have seen with wildfire, which is an increasing problem. Our parks having the ability to address such problems is important and powerful.
Where the bylaws have been operating in Loch Lomond, they have been effective. The measures that we are looking to introduce through the bill will help the enforcement of those bylaws to be even more effective than it is now. Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park is trying to do things in relation to water safety, which is a key concern, and being able to address some of the problems that they have seen has been important.
The ability to introduce bylaws is very much a beneficial power that our parks have. The measures that we are looking to introduce in the bill can only strengthen that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
I do not have much to add at this point and am happy to move straight to questions if the committee would prefer that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
I hope that I was able to outline in my announcement and my statement to Parliament a couple of weeks ago why we reached the position that we reached.
We have been through an extensive process. The statutory process, in which we appointed NatureScot as the reporter to advise on the proposal, commenced last summer. We received that report, in which the main recommendation was that we should not proceed with the designation but should, instead, look to build on existing structures within the overall area.
The NatureScot report outlined significant opposition to the idea of a national park. The overall figures from the consultation showed that 54 per cent of people were opposed to the national park and that 42 per cent supported it, but, when local responses alone were considered, that first figure rose to 57 per cent of people being opposed to designating Galloway as a national park.
The NatureScot report detailed a number of concerns that were raised throughout the consultation process. I know that there were concerns from specific sectors such as renewables, agriculture and the forestry sector. On the basis of its consultation, NatureScot made the recommendation that was the basis for our decision.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
Could I come back to some other points that you raised about the process, convener?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
It is challenging, because, as I outlined in my previous comment to Mark Ruskell, a key element of the nominating process that we went through was to ensure that there was local support. There was no point in taking forward a nomination if it did not appear to have strong community backing.
I do not know whether you mean that we must ensure that the community as a whole is represented but that some areas felt that their community had not necessarily been represented in that process. If so, that is why a key part of the reporting process on the back of that appraisal was to gauge the overall interest across the area and to do a deep and wide consultation to get people’s views. That is where the nominating process and the appraisal are important. In the appraisal for Galloway, I think that it was found that there was quite significant and extensive local engagement in and support for the proposal. That is why it was recommended as one of the areas that could proceed to the next stage.
If there are any particular suggestions from members as to improvements that could be made to the nominating or appraisal processes going forward, I am more than happy to consider them, but we did try to build aspects into the process to ensure that there was community engagement and support.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
Sorry—are you saying that it is the reporter stage and the engagement stages before it that need to be considered?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
It is about continued engagement with them throughout the process. I know that I have talked a lot about it today, but the Scottish Community Development Centre’s report sets out some of the issues that it saw with the process and how to avoid similar situations occurring again in the future. One of its suggestions is about bringing together a local steering group early in the process that can advise, help with that engagement and ensure that there is wider feed-in, so that people do not feel alienated by the process but feel that they are part of the conversation and that it is not something that is being done to them. We need to pay attention to a lot of the points that were raised in that piece of work.
I do not think that any of us would want to end up in a similar situation. We have to be able to have these discussions and debates without ending up as polarised as we have seen and experienced. We certainly want to avoid that in the future.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
Absolutely. That was identified in the report. A key part of NatureScot’s recommendation was to look at the existing structures and mechanisms in the area and to consider how to build on them. Those include the natural capital innovation zone, the work that South of Scotland Enterprise is doing, the UNESCO biosphere, the regional land use partnership, which you mentioned, and the framework on the back of that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mairi Gougeon
Yes, it can be a vulnerable process. I recognise the sheer amount of work done by the volunteers in Galloway and by those who put forward the other bids. I do not, by any means, underestimate how much work went into that and how much capacity it would have utilised.
We tried to support those volunteers and engaged other consultants to support the nominating groups, recognising the burden that the process would put on them. We also aimed to ensure that good quality bids were put forward for the appraisal process. I appreciate the difficulties that you raise and the onus that was placed on the volunteers. It is important that we supported the nominating groups, but I think that it had to be a community-led effort.
