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 2164 contributions
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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Mairi Gougeon
Yes, and I am happy to give the committee a bit of background information on where the commitment came from. We had an independent review of the field services that are delivered by the Animal and Plant Health Agency. That was commissioned by ministers a couple of years ago to ensure that they continue to offer value for money and to see whether any other models could deliver efficiencies or improve effectiveness. The report was published early last year and it contained 10 recommendations including the creation of a stand-alone Scottish animal health and welfare delivery body, which would, it was felt, best meet Scotland’s long-term interests.
We recently asked Professor Milne, who undertook that work, to revisit the report—to look at the manifesto commitment and update his report to take account of the changes that have taken place since then. Obviously, we have had the impact of EU exit, the new animal health regulations and Covid-19. We expect to get the report back in October.
We expect that a new Scottish veterinary service will at least be established within the current session of Parliament, subject to ensuring that we get the parliamentary time to deliver it. It is estimated that the initial work to create it will take about 18 months. There is a lot of information that we have to scope out as part of that process. We will consider what the most effective model will be and how we are going to deliver it. As I said, we hope that we will be able to undertake that work within the current session, securing the parliamentary time to deliver a veterinary service that works and delivers for Scotland.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Mairi Gougeon
We have done work through the farmer-led groups, which have provided a suite of recommendations, and we made a manifesto commitment that we would deliver on those. Earlier in the summer—not long after I was appointed to my role—I met the chairs of the farmer-led groups, who were all enthusiastic about getting to work and were keen for the recommendations to be delivered and to play their part in reducing emissions in Scotland.
There will be huge challenges—there is no getting around that—and I do not think that anybody would underplay them. However, we can be world leaders in Scotland when it comes to sustainable agriculture. We want to work alongside industry, farmers and land managers to deliver that. It will, of course, be for the board to test and develop detailed proposals to see what will work most effectively.
As I said in a previous answer, we committed in our manifesto to shifting half of our current funding for farming and crofting to conditional support by 2025. Although I cannot say what the specific measures will look like, because they are still to be co-developed, a key part of that will be ensuring that every farm business reduces its emissions to the lowest possible level and does what it can to restore and protect biodiversity across its business. Supporting biodiversity and reducing emissions will be key components of that.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Mairi Gougeon
I am happy to address those points, as I have done a couple of times during portfolio question time and during debate last week. That notion of culling livestock was nonsense last week, so it is nonsense this week. It is not being considered.
On the policies that are being developed, I do not think that it is fair for me to prejudge the work of the implementation oversight board. As I said at the start of my evidence, its first meeting will be on Monday, and that will be for the board to discuss and decide on.
You are right to say that COP26 is not far away. We want the group to be ambitious and, as I said, to get to work and start delivering on emissions reductions. I know that everybody on the board is keen to progress that work. That is why the board is meeting fortnightly. It will keep the impetus and drive going so that we can develop a package of funded measures in time for COP26.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Scottish Government Priorities
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Mairi Gougeon
The board was set up to drive forward the recommendations of the farmer-led groups. However, alongside that we have had various reports in the interim, such as the report by Farming for 1.5°. We have to consider the climate change plan update as well as various other reports that have been produced. Again, I cannot just cherry pick off the top of my head and without discussing with the board the things that we can implement straight away. It will be for the board to discuss and consider wider recommendations, and to see what work can be progressed—and progressed quickly.
