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 2308 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
On the process, do you think that there should be a firmer vision of the proposed national park at the point at which ministers formally propose it? That is a bit ambiguous under the legislation. There was an attempt to get the discussion going locally—from the bottom up and led by local people. Has that worked? Would it not be better, in a way, to have a much clearer vision at the point of proposing the park? The 2000 act does not explicitly require that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
Yes—that is difficult. You are asking people whether they want a national park, but when people ask, “What is it?” you are saying, “Well, you decide.” It is a tricky one.
Another point has been raised with me about guidance and how a suggested area has to meet the criteria under the 2000 act. Does there need to be a bit more guidance on that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
Thinking about the national park plans that we have and their status as planning documents and as the guiding vision for the local area, I am wondering how they could be strengthened through the bill. Do you have any reflections on park plans in particular?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
Public bodies obviously have a duty to have regard to those plans. However, there is less of a requirement for private landowners and developers to abide by and deliver the park plan. Do you think that national parks have enough teeth to deliver the objectives of their park plans when it comes to private landowners and developers?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
I suppose that the question is whether that is working right now. I think that a £10 million lottery bid is going in for a landscape-scale restoration project where I stay in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park, for example, so good things are happening, but some private landowners have not bought into that and there is potentially some conflict with the objectives of public agencies as well.
I am thinking back to where the primacy of the park plan sits in the bill and to whether more reforms could be brought in to strengthen that primacy. For example, is it right that a major development—there is obviously a lot of controversy about the Lomond Banks proposal at the moment—would not automatically go to a public inquiry if it were contrary to the park plan? Where does the park plan sit in relation to such developments?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
It sounds like there will be no more national parks for Scotland for the foreseeable future, at a time when lots of national park proposals are being developed in England and elsewhere.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
It came up in the discussions around the Tay forest bid, because the boundaries of that park would be contiguous with the existing two national parks. There are communities that perhaps have a better understanding of what a national park looks like, because they can look to their neighbours and see exactly what is happening. Would you be open to a conversation around that if, say, Perth and Kinross Council or others came forward and said, “Look, there is a case now to adjust the boundaries in some way”?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
Would an aspiration to make an area a food destination and to bring together restaurants, businesses and food producers be seen as a cultural aspect as well as an economic one?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
On another day in this room, we have been considering the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill and the provisions in it for land management plans. How do you see land management plans reflecting the vision of the park and the park plans?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Galloway and Ayrshire National Park Proposal
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Mark Ruskell
Do you think that there was a heavy reliance on volunteers? I know that some of the volunteers who were working on the earlier bids had to put their heads above the parapet to propose change, at quite a heavy cost to them. It feels as though, for many people, leading a change would put them in a vulnerable space.
