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 5780 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
We know that emamectin benzoate causes harm to crustaceans. A challenge that we face is that a very high percentage of Scotland’s inshore fisheries are dependent on crustaceans for their livelihood. It is important to factor that in. I am concerned that we are potentially favouring one sector over another and not making sure that those people’s livelihood can continue.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
That is very helpful. I am speaking to recommendation 29 from the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee report, which said that
“it is essential that the issue of waste collection and removal is given a high priority by the industry, the Scottish Government and relevant agencies. It is clearly one of the main impacts on the environment and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
That report, from 2018, is now several years old.
My concern is that there is an “urgency” in the recommendation and that—although I understand that eDNA monitoring and other things are being done—when we look back at the REC Committee report’s recommendation, that urgency has not really played a role in a lot of what we have been doing.
How can the committee have confidence that SEPA has the ability to fulfil its role in a meaningful way?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
Did you say 12 cases? You read that very quickly.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
I come back to the opening recommendations around a moratorium, because the industry is clearly in a problematic state. By downsizing and having less biomass, with fewer fish in the cages, we could potentially get the industry to a more manageable situation.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
Okay. I am still not sure that I am getting the answer on the recommendation for robust interventions in that situation. but I will leave it there.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
Ben Hadfield from Mowi Scotland talked to the committee about wanting to get to 5 per cent. Do the marine directorate and the Scottish Government have some kind of role in supporting farms to move to that humane level?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
One thing that has come up through talking to all the different regulatory bodies as part of our inquiry is that mortality does not really sit anywhere. We heard from Charles Allan, when he came in with a different hat on—I think it was a different hat—that the fish health inspectorate, for example, does not have powers to limit production following a high mortality event. That is related to recommendation 10 of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee’s report, which says that
“there should be a process in place which allows robust intervention by regulators when serious fish mortality events occur.”
There is also an issue about gathering that data and getting that information. If it is the case that nobody has the powers to oversee that issue, something needs to be done about that. How would you define a “robust intervention”, and where would that intervention sit, so that we get that clarity around the situation and that mortality data?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
But what was the advice?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
I will follow on from Tim Eagle’s questions. We know that
“Fish welfare is the responsibility of the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) but APHA investigates only a small sub-selection of reports of poor animal welfare on fish farms, if FHI (and occasionally third parties) notify it of high mortality events. It does not always inspect even the farms with the highest mortality.”
It is quite concerning that we have a body—APHA—that is required to investigate, but is not doing many investigations.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming in Scotland
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Ariane Burgess
Could you come back to the committee with a measurement that shows what APHA is investigating now and, with more resource, what it will do in the future?
