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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 855 contributions
|
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
I wonder whether there will be unintended consequences. For example, agriculture is being asked to do things such as reduce animal numbers, but that is going to cut down food production. Although the whole of the company may be net zero, therefore, we will be losing out on food production and possibly end up importing food that is more carbon heavy than what we are producing at home.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
Yes. I guess I am a little concerned that, if native woodland does not store carbon so quickly, there will possibly be a push not to use it and to leave it in the ground, so that it slowly stores carbon, rather than taking it and using it for other purposes.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
As a supplementary to that, Future Economy Scotland has suggested that private finance could increase project costs by almost 50 per cent. Does that provide good value for money?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
Thank you.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
An awful lot of agricultural funding goes toward activities that might be reduced if land is devoted to peatland restoration and tree planting. Rather than using a tick-box exercise to encourage them, is there a way to mitigate any losses that might be caused?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
People who carry out their own carbon audits may be taking mitigation measures—not necessarily tree planting, cutting animal numbers or things like that, but generating electricity or doing other things on their land. However, the carbon audits do not seem to take that activity into account. Given that such activity helps to offset the carbon that they emit, will there be measures to take that into account so that the various organisations that are, in reality, net zero are recognised as such?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
Thank you, convener. This is just a wee point of clarification. If I have picked you up right, cabinet secretary, you were saying that it takes longer for native woodland to store carbon than it does for commercial planting. How does that impact on our use of native woodland in the future? We have always said that, if we found better uses for native woodland, we would plant more of it in Scotland.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
Okay. Thank you. We have heard that farmers and crofters have a real role to play in peatland restoration, tree planting and the like. How do we ensure that support and funding for that work is coherent, so that people are encouraged to do it rather than discouraged?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
We have heard evidence about the role of crofters in peatland restoration and common grazings. It was suggested that there is a blockage in that, if there were carbon credits, there would be dubiety as to who could sell them. I would suggest that the peat is the crofters’ resource, but do you have any plans to do anything to unblock the issue?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Rhoda Grant
The croft house grant scheme is being cut by £2.1 million, and it looks as though the money that is coming out of the budget is to do with repayment of loans. Is that because no loans are being repaid, so the figure has fallen, or is that money going elsewhere? There is quite a big cut in that budget.
