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 1957 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
It was up to those organisations to speak to their members.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Do you believe that the consultation process should have followed the detailed engagement from QMS to understand what the levy payers actually believe about the particular raising of the ceiling?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Good morning, Ms Grahame. You have just said that you have been working on the issue for six years. Obviously, in those six years, things have changed. The proposed code of practice is probably outdated now and it has shortcomings. Would you be disappointed if the Government combined the two codes?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
There could be inconsistency across local authorities because of cost concerns—for example, in the constituencies that you and I represent, there might be an extra requirement for cross-border enforcement. Will you take into account the different challenges that local authorities would have to face with regard to an increase in the resource requirement?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
First, I just want to say that we will not see that protocol as part of the bill process—I think that everybody understands that—and I have concerns about the extension of the SSPCA’s powers if the provisions in the bill are passed. Will the SSPCA be able to use those extended powers without a protocol? We want to understand what will be in the protocol and what will be the agreed standards. That has been touched on slightly. Who is the best person to speak to that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Police Scotland highlighted some concerns in previous evidence. Do you have any concerns about how robust the protocol will be and how standards and training will be covered by your partnership agreement?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I have a question for David Lynn. We are in new territory with the new protocol. If somebody had their licence suspended on the basis of an investigation that had been carried out through the agreed protocol, which we have not seen, would that individual have the ability to appeal against the process that had been carried out if they believed that the protocol had not been followed?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I would like clarity on what will happen if the protocols cannot be agreed between Police Scotland and the SSPCA. In that circumstance, will the powers be extended to the SSPCA? I ask Iain Batho to answer, if he is the right person.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I know, but I want to be clear on it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I have been looking at some of the statistics, and I was concerned to see that one in five farmers says that they have suffered a wasted crop because of cancelled orders. In such cases, 29 per cent of farmers received no explanation, and 29 per cent of them had not been paid in 30 days.
Some of the key concerns among farmers are that they want to sell what they have agreed to sell to supermarkets, they want to be paid what it was agreed they would be paid, they want to be paid on time, they want a longer-term commitment rather than a short-term one, for sustainability reasons, and they want to agree on fair specifications. However, it sounds as though Chris Brown is saying that supply and demand, affordability and other external factors are playing into the issue. Given the really challenging legislative demand on Scotland’s farmers through the agriculture legislation, how can supermarkets look to a sustainable future and ensure that farmers have people to succeed them on their farms?
09:45