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
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
The dairy industry is to be protected—I use that term broadly—so that dairy farmers can stop any contract changes and have a fair say in the process. We hope that that will be quite groundbreaking for dairy farmers. Do other sectors in agriculture have the ability to cancel a contract or come to you and say that they have had issues such as frost, drought or flooding and ask you to be flexible?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I cannot quite remember Sophie Throup’s words, but she almost said that her company would honour a contract. We recently had flooding during storm Babet, when many farmers lost their potato crops and others lost neeps, I think. I am interested in whether farmers have to go out to the open market to honour their contracts. I am not sure whether that is necessarily relevant in Sophie Throup’s case, because Morrisons controls that within its growers. However, would Asda support somebody who had to go to the open market to buy potatoes or neeps to supply you?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Has the introduction of the Groceries Code Adjudicator benefited anyone in the food supply chain?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
In what way?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
You touched on the subject of my question, convener, so bringing in the other witnesses just now would be beneficial. I can then pick up on anything that does not come up.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Could we write to the minister on that specific point? There is still some dubiety in my mind about how that would work.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
If the protocol covered training, including some of the training that would need to be done by the SSPCA to take an investigation further, what would be the unintended consequences if the SSPCA was given powers to investigate without the police? Currently, crucial aspects of an investigation are out of the SSPCA’s reach, and Police Scotland is slightly concerned about the change. If a protocol was set, would that be covered by the review of the individual, if they were overreaching or were not carrying out their functions to the standard that was expected? What would be the unintended consequences of that going undetected?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I am glad that there has been an explanation to differentiate between humane cable restraints and traditional snares, as they were starting to be conflated. We need to be looking at an exemption for, and possibly—as Ross Ewing has just said—an impact assessment of, the use of humane cable restraints.
However, my question is to the GWCT and Conor Kelly and is about what the minister said in her opening statement last week. She said that shooting and trapping are available to land managers. I wonder how effective shooting and trapping are and whether you—particularly the GWCT—have any information on the effectiveness of the live capture of predators?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Can you put some figures behind that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Mike Flynn, are you saying that you believe that illegal snaring will continue among those who are bad practitioners or poachers even if the legislation is in place?
