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 5931 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
Committee members want to scrutinise the bill as much as possible, but we are limited because most of the detail will come in secondary legislation. What are the timescales for that secondary legislation? What role should the Parliament have in scrutinising it?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
Some people would suggest that those instruments are coming a bit late and that a lot of people are still waiting. There is still a lot of uncertainty. There will be a long wait until 2025 to get clarity on the future direction of travel.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
Before we move on to the next theme, I will make a point about the framework bill that we have been discussing. From your responses to questions on the four objectives, it appears that the bill has boundless scope—there are no limits to it—which I suggest would lead to complete lack of certainty about what it could deliver.
The Scottish Government has known since 2016 that we would have to have a replacement for the common agricultural policy. The transition period finished in 2020. The framework bill could therefore have been in place three years ago, but you say that we are introducing it only now so that you have time to develop secondary legislation to deliver on the policies. From what the committee understands, the industry finds that to be completely unacceptable. Why do we have a bill that will not put any meat on the bones until 2025, when that could have been done earlier? Is there any limit to the scope of the bill?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
I know what you are saying, but in some countries—France, for example—if you produce 50 acres of carrots, whoever buys that 50 acres also has to take responsibility for the 20 per cent of the crop that might be considered not to be high quality. However, there is nothing in the bill that would address that.
You are talking about high-quality produce. One of the issues in the supply chain is that when a farmer has, for example, 50 acres of carrots of which only 60 per cent can be considered to be high quality, supermarkets and retailers will take only the high-quality product. There is nothing in the bill that would help to level that out. In other countries, there are regulations about responsibility for production—not just production of the high-quality food. That situation is often a barrier to farmers getting the right price—a sustainable and reliable price—but nothing in the bill would address that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
I will revert back to questions on the objectives. What are your aspirations for on-farm nature restoration, climate mitigation and adaptation?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
How do you expect the bill to deal with the varying levels of biodiversity on farms? For example, we visited Galloway to look at dairy farms, where we saw, within three or four miles of each other, very different approaches—one that one would suggest was intensive sustainable agriculture and one that was extensive. How will you set targets or policies to ensure that some of our most productive farms, which might not have the greatest levels of biodiversity, start on a level playing field? How do you support intensive practices that can deliver climate change benefits, as opposed to those that are extensive? How will the bill deal with the difference in farming practices?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
Thank you.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
Will secondary legislation set out the national targets or aspirations, or is it likely that that will be done on an individual farm basis—or, indeed, a landscape basis—to pick up the packages that you have talked about? One size does not fit all, but how granular does this get? Does it go down to individual enterprises?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
I call Ariane Burgess.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Finlay Carson
When was that commitment given?
