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 692 contributions
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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
I agree. I was about to say that I do not think that that question pertained to the purpose of the bill. I can say that the Government must consider climate change and bake that into all the legislation that we develop, but food policy and the management and welfare of wildlife are two separate issues.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
The most important point of consideration was the control element. There is a problem under the 2002 act to do with determining whether something was a flagrant breach of what was intended—that people should not chase and kill a mammal—or whether control was lost and the situation was not deliberate. I want people to be able to tell whether the law is being complied with in a given scenario, and that is much more readily clear when there are two dogs rather than three, four, five, six, seven or eight.
Equally, as I have said, the basis of the bill is about protecting wild mammals, and it is far less likely that a wild mammal will be chased and killed by a dog when there are only two dogs—because the person who is taking them should be able to keep them under control—than it is if there are five, six, seven or eight dogs, which can be lost control of more easily. It is much less easy to tell when those numbers of dogs are chasing and killing.
It is about reducing the opportunity for packs of dogs to chase and kill wild mammals. England and Wales have a two-dog limit, which they have found works successfully.
Taking all those things into account, the two-dog limit was, for us, a reasonable baseline from which to start. As members know, we have, in two circumstances, supplemented it with a licensing scheme where no other methods are available.
10:45Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
Picking up on the previous point, I would just note that the bill makes reference to “preventing” damage, so it is not necessary to wait until damage has been done.
As for the minimum number of dogs, that is dependent on the activity, the land and the issue at hand. At this stage, I am not going to theorise about what would be a suitable number, because there are so many variables that I could not possibly be accurate.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
The Bonomy review was a really important part of our development of the terms of the bill, as were two public consultations and, of course, the extensive and deliberately wide-ranging stakeholder consultation that we undertook. We have implemented a lot of what Bonomy recommended, but we decided not to pursue his recommendations on vicarious liability or on the reverse burden of proof. I am happy to go into more detail on that, if the committee would like, but I think that you have already discussed that quite a bit.
I suppose that the two-dog limit was not explicitly recommended by Bonomy, but he said that there was evidence that foxes were being unlawfully chased and killed, and I think that he has subsequently said that the combination of the two-dog limit and the licensing scheme is a workable and proper approach.
In terms of alternative approaches, probably one of the main ones that we considered was whether to seek to amend the 2002 act or to redo it. Some of the feedback that we have had about the clarity that we have achieved via the bill and the way in which it is drafted—albeit that we are at the beginning of the parliamentary process—has justified our approach.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
Yes—because there would not be intent behind the activity.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
I heard that issue being discussed before. Our position on it is that we are not considering provision of compensation.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
I understand what you are saying. We are coming at this on the basis of considering how to make things workable, and that will cover a whole series of issues, including timing.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
That is fine.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
Because it is a criminal issue, I will make no assumptions about the reasons for hunts going out in the past. However, I am absolutely confident that the bill, once passed, will stop the illegal activity of chasing and killing an animal in Scotland’s countryside and will facilitate legitimate control under strict circumstances.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Màiri McAllan
As I should have made clear in my answer to Karen Adam, the section relates to regulations to give effect to or in pursuit of the bill, not anything outwith its scope.
Perhaps Hazel Reilly might want to add to that.
