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 831 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
I will continue with that theme. I declare an interest of a kind: like Jenni Minto, I represent an island constituency.
I am not clear what you are recommending to crofters. On the one hand, you are saying that, rather than having livestock, they might be better off having trees. On the other hand, you say—quite rightly—that you would not want trees to be planted on peatland. In places such as the west of Scotland, peatland is pretty much all that there is. What do you recommend that crofters should do instead of having livestock?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
I am sorry to interrupt, but I think that you misunderstood my question—perhaps I did not put it very well. My point is that the animals cannot be just grass fed. In terms of livestock, you cannot have agriculture, as anyone would understand it, without bringing in feed to island and west coast areas. It cannot be done—there would be no livestock.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
I asked Jim Walker what the distance was to mainstream. I do not know what the distance is to the end of his contribution, but maybe he can address that point before he finishes.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
It is interesting to hear the arguments develop about what agriculture might look like in the future.
I am thinking about my part of Scotland, and the answers that were given to some of my previous questions tended to suggest that there should be less agriculture and that people should be paid not to do agriculture. There might be a place for that, but I am interested in what you said about diet change. That implies that a massive cultural change is needed at the level of supermarkets. If that is the model for the future and the means by which we avoid the offshoring of carbon—a situation in which we do not produce as much food but we ask people in countries that do not care very much about carbon output to produce more for us—how on earth do we navigate through the cultural change and the change in the attitudes of supermarkets that are required to achieve the change in diet that you are talking about?
11:30Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
This is not meant to be a provocative question. Is that because the arable sector has more means than other sectors to invest?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
I am sorry, but—again, I understand the point that you have made about restoring peatland; we want to restore peatland—what is the business model for a crofter who might have a total agricultural subsidy of £2,000 or £3,000 a year, as most crofters do, to invest in something else that has not been specified in what you have said to us?
I support diversification. I realise that we cannot use the uplands only for sheep, but I do not understand what form of agriculture you are recommending for the kind of person who I have just described if it is not about trees or livestock.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
I am sorry if this question sounds as if it is on a similar theme, but I think that it diverges slightly from what has already been asked.
Again, I am supportive of what has been said about diversification and the need to tackle emissions. However, one of the ways in which we have been talking about emissions has been in terms of animal numbers, and specifically whether the dependency on, say, cattle feed should be part of the business model going forward. We have talked about livestock numbers, but is it sustainable for people to use feed other than grass as a model? After all, it is difficult to see how agriculture would exist on the west or north-west coast of Scotland if no one was allowed to bring in cattle feed. What are your views on animals being grass fed only and on other feedstuffs?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
As important as those issues are, perhaps the person to whom we are speaking can, before he finishes, address the question that I asked: what is the distance to mainstream?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
My question is: do you view agriculture that involves bringing in feed other than grass as sustainable?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Alasdair Allan
Thank you.
