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 2492 contributions
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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
That is part of the work that we will undertake to go through all the possibilities thoroughly. The issues that you have talked about are exactly those that we have experienced in considering the matter before. That is why we need to undertake detailed work to see whether that should be considered.
As you have said, there are a number of bodies. I know that people have suggested in other evidence sessions that it could be something for Public Health Scotland or Food Standards Scotland as well. That is why we are undertaking that work.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
Yes.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
I am sorry, but I missed the first part of your question.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
There absolutely is such a commitment; we have made the commitment that that right will be in the human rights bill. In effect, though, all the work that we have talked about today is what gives effect to that right, and section 3 specifically requires us to have regard to it. Let me provide that assurance.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
The commitment is in our manifesto, as you rightly said, but we need to take time to undertake a detailed review of the existing bodies and consider international comparators. The discussion about whether there should be an oversight body and the number of bodies that already exist in this space has come through in the evidence, and it has been interesting to consider what has been said. It is important that we take time to get the approach right. There is a commitment, as part of the Bute house agreement, to give the matter further consideration. The work is on-going.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
Not at the moment. I hope that I have been able to explain the rationale for setting out the relevant authorities in the bill as we have done. Again, I note that we have the power to amend that list, and if the committee has any recommendations for authorities that it thinks should be added to the list, I would be happy to consider them.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
I have listened to the evidence and the concerns and views that people have expressed that the bill is too narrow in scope, but I come back to the fact that it is a framework bill that underpins the work that we are already doing. It puts the good food nation plans on a legislative basis. The plans will contain the detail.
I know that we will probably come on to discuss participation, scrutiny and how all of that will take place, because parliamentary scrutiny throughout the process will be important. However, given the nature of some of the policies that we are talking about, we have set out in section 1 that the plans will contain the outcomes, indicators and measurements of what we are looking to achieve. The plans will ultimately set out all of that and how it will be achieved.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
Yes. We will analyse that.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
Discussions between officials from the four nations to see what that recommendation might look like are on-going. I do not know whether the officials would like to come in on that point.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Mairi Gougeon
That point is separate from the discussion that we are having today about the bill. If you have specific questions about that, I am happy to follow up on that afterwards.
