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 2089 contributions
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COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
My second question is more constituency based. We still have constituents who are getting their first jag in England and their second jag in Scotland, but the connection has not yet been made, so they are struggling to get their vaccination certificate. Are we any closer to getting a solution to that?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
First, I will ask about the factors that you are considering in relation to COP26, which you briefly outlined. Were any lessons learned from the recent G7 summit, or were there any problems after it? Are some of the systems that you will put in place for COP26 similar to what happened with the G7 summit?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Farming and Crofting
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
Beatrice Morrice, have you had any response from the UK Government to your request for a one-year Covid visa that would allow us to fill the short-term gap in the workforce across the food and drink sector?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Farming and Crofting
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
My question is again for Pete Ritchie and Miranda Geelhoed. We have a bit of a problem in that food is not cheap to produce but it has to be cheap enough for people to be able to buy it. How do we square that circle?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Farming and Crofting
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
Both Rachael Hamilton and the convener talked about the reduction in livestock levels that we are aiming for. However, the cabinet secretary has already made it quite clear that there is no plan to reduce the suckler cow numbers in the country. I want to put that on the record.
A point was made earlier about the policy that we are looking to develop. In Scotland, the conditionality will be 50:50, whereas the UK scheme is all about public funds for public goods. My question is probably for Beatrice Morrice. We see the farming community as being critical to achieving our net zero target, and food production is a critical public good, because we need food. We need a resilient food and drink sector and we need the primary producers. How can we get the farming community to enthusiastically take up the policy? Is the 50:50 ratio is acceptable to the farming community? Farmers want to produce food, but they accept that we need to do things differently. How do you feel the policy will go down with the community?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Farming and Crofting
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
The question of profitability and resilience in the sector is a very loaded one, because there are so many different sectors, and profitability and resilience will be different across each sector.
I will come to Davy McCracken first, because I want to look at where the profitability and resilience will come from in hill and upland farming. We have already touched on what you called planting trees, rather than forestry—I am glad that you did, because I would like us to get away from the conflict between trees and farming. There has to be a way to integrate them. I can see real opportunities for us to develop a timber industry that farmers could be part of. There are bound to be jobs that can be created out of a timber industry. In addition, rather than having sheds, maybe we could have woodland. I would like to explore some of those issues and how we can tie that in with making sure that we have profitability and resilience in the upland sector.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Farming and Crofting
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
Can you clarify that? Are you talking about getting support to those farms that are already doing the things that they have been asked to do over the past number of years and continuing to recognise that?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Farming and Crofting
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
The question is probably directed at Stephen Young and Christopher Nicholson. Earlier, I had a question in my head about tenants’ fears about support for tree planting, peat restoration and stuff like that. We have kind of skittered around that. I would like to understand the relationship between the landowner—who might be investing in planting trees while taking support from the Government to do so—and the tenant, and how that affects the tenant. When I talk about tenants, I am talking not just about pre-1991 tenants but about people who have long-term leases. Is there equity in costs and the funding that comes into a farm as a result of that? How do you differentiate? If the tenant has a 20-year lease but the trees will not be harvested for 30 years, how will that work?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Farming and Crofting
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
We are looking at a 50:50 policy. Would it be a harder sell to have complete conditionality on public funds for public goods, as there is in the UK scheme, where there is no mention of food production at all? I am not asking you to be political. We want the farming community to go with the policy and embrace it. Will it be easier to get it to embrace a policy in which farmers are still regarded as food producers or a policy where they are regarded as—I am quoting—“nothing but park keepers”?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Jim Fairlie
Okay. Thank you.
My second question is about St Johnstone Football Club, which travelled to Turkey, played a game and came home. I have constituents who have properties in Turkey and want to go over to them to deal with issues. They have said that elite sportspeople can travel, but they cannot. Is there a way for people to travel safely to Turkey, which is on the red list? Why was it okay for St Johnstone to go there? I am not saying that St Johnstone should not have gone there, but the complaint from constituents is that there is hypocrisy. Can you give us details about why that was the case?
