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 3581 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
I hope that it will be extremely rare.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
Bear in mind that, at the moment, we are simply airing the idea. We have not decided what our approach will be.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
No. I think that vicarious liability is important, for the reasons that I set out to Sarah Boyack, so there must be provision to ensure that the scenario that you have just outlined, where, in effect, you have a fall guy, cannot happen. It cannot be the case that a junior member of an organisation would be prosecuted for something that was actually the intent of the organisation, so there must be vicarious liability provision.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
I think that you would have to prove that that company went rogue, so to speak, which I suppose is what you are describing. You would have to prove that a contractor was doing that off its own bat, without the instruction of the contracting company. Who is responsible for the offence needs to be provable.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
Yes, that would be the case if a contractor came in and cut corners without the express direction or knowledge of the contracting organisation. In that case, it would not just be ecocide that it was taken to court for; it would properly also be taken to court by the company that contracted it.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
If I may just give a personal opinion, if anyone did not come to work in Scotland because we had an offence of ecocide, what would that say about the company? We want all companies to act responsibly. If environmental law exists to prevent serious harm to the environment, whether under the 2014 act or an ecocide act, what would it say about a company that it would not come to do business somewhere because of that law?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
There would be such a high bar. The big debate that we are having is whether the bill’s provisions are sufficiently additional to those that already exist in Scotland. I would be very wary of a company that said that it would not work in Scotland because we had an ecocide law.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
Section 2(3) departs from the common position and effectively reverses the burden of proof by placing the burden of proving the defence of necessity on an accused person. Careful consideration must be given to whether that reversed burden is compatible with the ECHR article 6 right. We do not think that it is and that is a flaw in the bill.
Under article 6 of the ECHR, to be “presumed innocent” is an aspect of a person’s right to a fair trial. Section 2(3) reverses that, which we feel quite strongly about. Should the bill reach stage 2, we will look to change that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
Yes, you are absolutely right, Mr Stewart. Even ahead of the submissions by local authorities and permitting authorities, I favoured an amendment to introduce a defence of acting under permit or other authorisation, as exists in relation to the offence that is set out in section 40 of the 2014 act. It would make the bill and the 2014 act compatible, and it would provide that defence.
You are right that NFU Scotland, the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and a lot of local authorities have mentioned it.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Ecocide (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 December 2025
Gillian Martin
It is important that we recognise that a defence of carrying out a permitted activity is not a licence to commit ecocide. However, acting outwith the terms of the authority could expose someone to prosecution for ecocide.
If the activity is permitted, there are already provisions in the application for the permit and in the decision to give the permit that a person must meet. If someone acts outwith the permit, they are acting outwith the permit. They could be wilfully committing severe environmental damage.
