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 5056 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill: Consideration of Stage 1 Approach
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
Okay. That is great: it sounds very straightforward. One of the other things that come up with us in conversations about the new deal is the onerous reporting that local authorities often end up having to do for national schemes, but that sounds pretty straightforward. I just wanted to check that.
Thank you so much for coming this morning—it has been really helpful. We got all our burning questions answered and we have a lot more clarity on the bill, which I really appreciate.
Because we agreed at the start of today’s meeting to take the next items in private, that was the last public item for today. Thank you.
10:30 Meeting continued in private until 11:01.Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill: Consideration of Stage 1 Approach
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
That is great, thanks. It gives them that flexibility.
Some local authorities might see the bill as being of benefit to a select few—you have already indicated that some might choose to use it and some might not—with no obvious benefits to councils that decide not to introduce a levy. From the Scottish Government’s analysis, how many local authorities are likely to introduce and benefit from a local visitor levy, and why should other local authorities and their communities support the legislation?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
We need to move to an ecosystem approach and look at everything as a whole.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
I understand that, but I am confused as to why we are talking at length about glue traps, and I am trying to get clarity. We are talking about them because the bill is bringing in provisions on glue traps, but it is about wildlife management, muirburn and specifically raptor control. I want to get clarity.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
On muirburn, is there anything else that you think needs to be in the bill, or are you content with it?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
When we were talking about wildfires earlier, I picked up that we need to follow the precautionary principle. The desire to move from a voluntary practice to a regulated and licensed practice is because we will potentially see more wildfires happening. Maybe that will be from natural causes, but my understanding from talking to people who work in that area is that wildfires are always at the hand of a human, whether it is in error or by intention.
I picked up from what you were saying that, as wildfires increase, we will need to increase the workforce and the equipment that is on hand to attend to those. Regulating muirburn is a way of moving towards a more precautionary approach so that we limit what might happen in other areas. We have already seen, with the fires in Cannich and Corrimony, that deploying people to attend to the fires is quite challenging.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
Could we take that technology further and have something within a trap so that you could tell if it had been moved? We do that remotely for many other things. Surely, we could move in that direction.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
I want to come back to the code of practice. I am interested in the idea that you are looking at the scientific evidence base and the bigger picture. Have you looked into the issue of lead shot being used? I realise that that is being phased out, but I am aware that, in parts of my region, at least historically, lead shot might be fired from what is a grouse moor but ends up being shot into trees on neighbouring land. Is there any understanding of the problems of chemical grit running into the watercourse? Is that talked about? Have we looked into lead seeping into our ground and our watercourses?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
It is an opportunity for somebody.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
We try to protect peat because we recognise that it is a super carbon sink. It is great that we are moving potentially to the licensing of it, but it seems odd that, on the one hand, we are funding the protection of it and, on the other hand, we are saying that it is okay to burn it, no matter the depth.
