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
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
One of those choices is to maintain direct payments, which the UK Government has said it will phase out. Again, the Subsidy Control Bill could have a serious impact on our ability to do that, or to offer payments through the less favoured area support scheme or some of the coupled support schemes that do not exist elsewhere or in which there might be policy divergence in the future.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
It is about those pieces of legislation together. Ultimately, we are finding that it is huge step backwards from being in the EU, where we had those powers and the freedom to exercise those powers in developing our own policy. The 2020 act and the Subsidy Control Bill remove those powers and put them in the hands of UK ministers, which—as I said in previous responses—undermines the common frameworks process. It was designed to resolve, or to try and work through, some of the policy divergence that we will have in some areas, because it is every devolved Government’s right to set the polices that are right for the people who elect it to that position and who deliver on the commitments that it has set out. In essence, the 2020 act and the Subsidy Control Bill remove our ability to do that, because the ultimate end decision rests with the UK Government. That completely undermines the powers that we have in those devolved areas that are of critical importance for devolved Administrations, and it means that the UK Government can overrule us in devolved areas of policy.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
Fisheries is a more complex area in relation to the Subsidy Control Bill. I will bring in Caro Cowan on that point.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
That is not the case with the Subsidy Control Bill, which will open us up to legal challenge from other parts of the UK if we continue to provide the type of income support that I have talked about, because that conflicts with the principles that have been outlined in the bill. That is where the problem lies.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
I would be happy to write to the committee outlining our concerns about specific parts of the bill, if you would find that helpful.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
I do not know whether there are particular issues in that regard. Perhaps my officials have further information on food regulation.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
That is one area on which I would be happy to follow up with the committee after the meeting.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
We also have other important markets to which we now no longer have access, unfortunately, because of Brexit. Again, that is why we had the common frameworks process, with which all Administrations engaged in good faith. That process is about helping to manage policy divergence, which is not a threat to any one Government—there was divergence when we were members of the EU. All that we ask for is the ability for Scotland to continue to do that.
If the Subsidy Control Bill is passed in its current form, it will constrain our policy choices in the future. For example, we have support payments for our less favoured areas that do not exist in other parts of the UK, and our ability to continue to offer such payments might well be put at risk, given the powers in the bill as it is currently drafted.
It is not only the Scottish Government that is raising those concerns; the same concerns have been raised by the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Government. They, too, are seriously concerned about the powers in those two pieces of legislation, which completely undermine the collaborative work that we have all done to establish the frameworks. That might lead the devolved Administrations to lose faith in the process altogether, because the UK Government is trying to retain control of those powers and to constrict our policy-making powers.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
No—that is one area, but it is a fairly substantive area, given the size of the payments involved and the fundamental nature of the support for our whole agricultural sector.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Impact of European Union Exit
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Mairi Gougeon
We have already committed to maintaining that level of spend throughout this session of Parliament. I know that the committee is aware of the work that is under way with the implementation board to help to design and develop our future policy.
It is not possible for me to give the committee the full financial impact. The problem with the Subsidy Control Bill is that it could constrain our ability to make future policy decisions so, sadly, it is not possible to quantify the impact. When I spoke about figures earlier, I was talking about the scale of the overall investment that we make in our agriculture sector and the fact that our policy choices about how to direct that investment are constrained.
