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 2173 contributions
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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
The Scottish Government plans to make direct payments to farmers on the basis of food production, and up here we also have hogg and less favoured area support scheme payments. You have none of those in England. If you start being lobbied by farmers down in England who say, “This direct support is causing us problems in our marketplace,” you have the power to require the Scottish Government to take that subsidy away, do you not?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
I am very glad that my colleague Jenni Minto raised the subject of the Northern Ireland protocol; we will come back to that later.
I refer back to what my colleague Dr Allan was asking you about. I genuinely get the point that you are trying to be as positive as you can be about the situation regarding the subsidy framework. I refer, however, to what has been reported to the committee for socioeconomic analysis of the European Chemicals Agency—SEAC—the Scottish Government and the House of Lords, and I would particularly like to examine the statement that has been made by a House of Lords committee. It says:
“there are powers under which the Secretary of State can refer subsidies or subsidy schemes made by the devolved Governments to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which could potentially have the effect of overriding the devolved governments”—
and “overriding the devolved governments” is the really important bit—
“when it comes to proposing subsidies”.
Other countries have agriculture separated from any subsidy control regimes. Why has the UK Government not done that? Did you have any consultation with the Scottish Government when you were putting your proposals forward?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
But did you consult the Scottish Government on the Subsidy Control Bill? This point keeps coming back as a major issue. Did you consult the Scottish Government specifically on the Subsidy Control Bill?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
Okay. I am going to talk about the impact of extending transitional staging periods and about border checks and import controls. Earlier, you spoke about the digitisation scheme. Salmon is our biggest food export, and it is massively important that the industry can get fresh fish to its destination as quickly as possible. It desperately requires a digitised scheme and you said that you are working on that, but I urge you to work on it very quickly to give some comfort to that industry.
When you decided to extend the transitional staging period for border checks, did you consult the Scottish Government? The president of NFU Scotland, Martin Kennedy, said:
“The prolonged failure of the UK Government to place UK food exporters on an even keel with those exporting goods to the UK from Europe shows an astonishing level of incompetence and failure to support Scottish producers and our food and drink sector.”
Not only is this about the monetary value of food and drink to the Scottish sector; there are also disease risks without import checks. More than 1 million pigs in Europe have been slaughtered because of African swine fever, a disease that has a mortality rate of up to 100 per cent in pigs. Although there would have been no controls had we remained in the EU, our status as non-members poses a greater risk, because we have lost access to the valuable and highly responsive EU surveillance network, which is used to track and trace that disease. Combined with zero import checks, that leaves the pig industry—which is already in crisis—greatly exposed. Can you tell the pig industry and the NFUS why staging has been delayed?
10:30Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
In the interests of time, I will leave it there.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
But other countries have been able to take agriculture out of their subsidy control regimes. Why has the UK Government not given agriculture the same respect? Let’s face it—agriculture is about ensuring that we have a resilient food and drink industry in this country, which, for us, specifically means Scotland. Why has the UK Government decided not to remove agriculture and allow it to get the kind of support that is required, particularly here in Scotland, to keep the food and drink industry resilient?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
With respect, secretary of state, being “told in advance” is not a consultation. If people have a consultation, they talk about something, they come to a conclusion and they deliver a set of principles. If the Scottish Government was not included in the consultation, how could it have any input on what was coming forward?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
Was there any consultation?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
I hear the words, but I will wait to see the actions. Thank you, Mr Eustice.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
European Union Exit: Impact on Rural Affairs and Islands Remit
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Jim Fairlie
I am sorry to press you, secretary of state, but can you not see that that is exactly the kind of thing that causes the difficulties that we have with the co-operation agreement? You said that subsidy control bills will not be effected because you will not do that to us; however, in reality, you do not consult even on big issues, such as this one, that have a direct impact on our constituents and on the big industries in Scotland. Can you not see that that is causing a problem?
