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 514 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Dog Theft (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
Chief Inspector Michael Booker talked about the reasons why reporting data might not reflect the true nature of the crime. We see that in England and Wales, where the rate of reported crime is estimated to be below 5 per cent of the true figure. I wonder whether the same reason for underreporting—how it is recorded—exists in England and Wales. I also wonder whether the bill will make a difference not only to the reporting of incidents. Due to the impact of the bill, might the number of reported incidents go up while the actual number falls? Should we add something to the bill to make it more impactful?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Dog Theft (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
There would be a change in perception.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Dog Theft (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
Is the bill where we should deal with that? Listening to both sides of the argument, it seems a complex matter. Could we deal with it in the bill? We have the ability to amend it at stage 2, so is there something that it would be useful to put in the bill? Or should the matter be dealt with in domestic abuse law, although we do not have a vehicle at the moment in which to do that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
Part of the problem is that it feels a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. No one sees the full picture that we are aiming for and it is all very piecemeal. SSIs on various bits are lodged at committee, but when we highlight issues raised by farmers and crofters, you say, “Oh, but that was discussed at ARIOB and they never said anything.” When we go back farmers and crofters, we discover that they have said things at ARIOB that they have then relayed to committee members in order to try to raise their concerns, which turn out to be huge issues when we are looking at the statutory instruments. Obviously, something is not working. I think that you would agree that some of the issues that have been raised by the committee about the statutory instruments were crucial and should have been sorted out earlier.
If the ARIOB process was working, stakeholders were being heard at those meetings and the department was listening to what they say, we would have overcome the issues. It seems to me that ARIOB is not working and that there is no vision for agriculture in five or 10 years’ time, so people feel as though they are running around like headless chickens, trying to see how their business fits into the various piecemeal aspects of legislation. Surely, that is not the way to work. What can we do about ARIOB to ensure that it works? Is there another mechanism that we can use? What is your vision for agriculture? What will be happening in the sector in five or 10 years’ time?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
Can I—
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
My question follows on from Tim Eagle’s question about the computer system. Last week, we heard real concerns that the computer system was a blocker on policy and that the policy was designed around the system rather than the system being designed around policy. How much of a blocker is it, and what is being done to make sure that it is not?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
Okay.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
But if ARIOB was working, this would not be the case. Take the instrument on calving intervals—the Rural Support (Improvement) (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Regulations 2024. That gave rise to an issue for rural areas and islands, and you have admitted that. You have said that you will look at that again. That was discussed at ARIOB, yet we got an instrument that created real concerns in the industry. If ARIOB was working, those concerns should have been ironed out there, and we should have got a piece of legislation that nobody commented about.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
A Climate Transition for Scottish Agriculture
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
Before we get the views of the other witnesses, I will come back on that point. We see that our cattle and sheep numbers are falling, but if our imports will increase to fill that gap, we will—while our balance sheet might look a bit better—be importing something that is not fed on grass, which is a carbon store. How do we get the balance right in that regard? We are not an island on our own in all of this.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Rhoda Grant
No one is arguing that payments should not be made on time. The big issue is that we cannot change what we pay. If you want to increase screening and put more into the system to change the direction, the computer system will not work. Are we really saying that we need a new system? I remember when the system came in. It was a disaster. I sat in committee sessions looking at what went wrong. At that point, it was clear that it could not be put right. Are we really in need of a new system? We have to keep the current one in order to make the payments, but, if we are going to change what we do and move away from the CAP, we need a new system that will do that.
