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 6590 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
I need a little bit more understanding for this conversation. This is not the question that I was going to ask, but I would like to get a sense of this from Nim Kibbler. You have talked a number of times about resource efficiency. At the very beginning of the evidence session, I noted down your mentioning healthy livestock and local food in that context. Could you unpack what you mean by “resource efficiency” a bit more, so that we can understand it?
You can perhaps also touch on the question that I was going to ask, which follows on from Emma Harper’s questions on opportunities with what could be used as fertiliser. That is also what Donna Smith talked about in discussing how crofters are using seaweed. The seaweed sector in Scotland is growing; it seems to be moving. Does that present a possible opportunity for more natural fertilisers, or does it become too technical?
Anyway—what does “resource efficiency” mean?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Okay. I guess that I will just have to go and research it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
That would be helpful. It seems to me that that is quite an important part of the conversation, which we need to unpack and understand more.
What about the seaweed? Do we think that it presents a possibility?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Is there enough funding and other support to allow you to think about where to put the trees and so on?
10:45
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Nim, you talked about soil being a driving factor in the overall—you used the word “holistic”—practice that you and other farmers in the Nature Friendly Farming Network use. In the whole farm plan, there is a soil test that farmers can opt into voluntarily. However, it is surprising to me is that farmers do not test their soil, if soil is a driving factor. That testing is currently optional. What more do we need in place?
There is a spectrum of people, ranging from those who have never tested their soil all the way to Mr Griffin down in the Borders—I cannot remember his first name—who tests his soil to an incredible level. What more would we need, by way of support, training and so on, to help farmers to move to an understanding that soil really is a direct, driving factor?
09:30
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
It has been an interesting conversation so far. I can predict the answer to this question. The plan assumes that around 45 per cent of farmers will take up low-carbon measures, with most of that happening after 2030. As 2030 is the year before the next election, I think that the Government assumes that a lot of work will be done from 2026 to 2030, in terms of that rabbit that will come out of the bag.
From where you sit, does it feel realistic that we will get to 2030 and we will suddenly have that uptake? What would need to change on the ground for the uptake to scale now and into session 7? We have talked a lot about policy, but what other things do we need to help farmers to move in the holistic direction that we are talking about? [Interruption.]
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Ah, tatties—great.
Do you have a sense that enough farmers already know what they need to do? We have legislated for regenerative and sustainable farming under the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024. Do enough farmers know what that is and what they need to do, or does there need to be more support? We have tier 4, which specifies continuous professional development, but does that get to the point of helping farmers to understand the new context that they need to be working in?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
We have talked about a cliff edge, and a hillock has now been introduced, but it seems that we are in a place where people who are working with the land—farmers—need to try things out. Nim Kibbler has talked quite a bit about how we have a nuanced, diverse landscape, with different land and soils. Do we need to do something more to recognise that and to encourage farmers to try things out, knowing that, if it fails, there is the just transition—or perhaps not the just transition but some kind of support—in place in case a farmer puts a field over to trying more integrated measures or whatever, or they try certain cover crops or something and it does not work and they do not get a yield? Do we need to recognise that there is time to try things out over the next five years, that some of that will fail and that farmers need to be supported in that work?
10:00
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
Yes, I will move on to the issue of peatland and trees. We have heard that farmers and crofters are central to delivering peatland restoration and tree planting. I am interested in hearing whether the evidence shows that current support and advice are strong enough or well enough integrated to make that happen at scale. If not, what is missing?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Ariane Burgess
We perhaps do not want to put that on to Jackie Baillie; we could ask the Government about it. There are fish counters in the Government’s data-gathering mix, but how comprehensive is that?
