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 5835 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4 (Annual Review)
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
Can I just come in? You are saying that on policy 1 there is uncertainty about how to respond to the nature requirements. Why is that so important? I think that people understand the climate emergency, but what is going on in nature that makes it so important and puts it at a high level and makes it the first thing that we come to when we read NPF4?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4 (Annual Review)
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for your useful points. The challenge is that where the wind blows in Scotland there is a lot of peat.
I will bring in Gordon MacDonald with a couple of questions.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4 (Annual Review)
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
The next item is to take evidence on the committee’s annual review of national planning framework 4 from two panels of witnesses. On our first panel, we are joined in the room by Ian Aikman, who is the chair of Heads of Planning Scotland, and David Givan, who is the chief planning officer at the City of Edinburgh Council. We are joined online by Morag Ferguson and Mairi Maciver, who are both planning managers at the Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. I welcome all the witnesses to our meeting. I love the backdrops of the witnesses who are online. Thank you for that—they are really lovely.
I remind members and those who are participating in the session that there are active legal proceedings concerning the interpretation of NPF4 policies and the interaction between those policies and existing local plans. Under the Parliament’s standing orders,
“A member may not in the proceedings of the Parliament refer to any matter in relation to which legal proceedings are active except to the extent permitted by the Presiding Officer.”
Although we do not wish the discussion and debate to be unduly restricted, I ask members and witnesses to avoid referencing specific matters that are currently before the courts.
We turn to questions. We will try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but if you would like to come in please indicate that to the clerks. I ask Morag Ferguson and Mairi Maciver to indicate that they want to come in by typing R in the chat function. There is no need for you to turn your microphones on and off because our broadcast team will do that. Morag and Mairi should note that there might be a slight delay before their mic is turned on. Do not worry about that; we are aware of the pause.
I will begin with a couple of questions. I will direct the first question to Ian Aikman. The committee keeps on hearing calls for the Scottish Government to establish a hierarchy of NPF4 policy priorities. The idea of doing so would be to assist decision makers and developers. Do you think that that would be a good approach? If you do, why? If you do not, why not?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4 (Annual Review)
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
Great. There is some work to be done in that regard.
Pam Gosal needs to leave before the end of the meeting, so I will bring her in to ask a couple of questions.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4 (Annual Review)
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
I call Pam Gosal, who joins us online.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4 (Annual Review)
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
I want to bring in Morag Ferguson to see what is going on on brownfield sites in her part of Scotland.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4 (Annual Review)
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
Claire Daly, did you indicate that you wanted to come in?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4 (Annual Review)
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks very much. I will bring in Miles Briggs with a couple of questions.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 14 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
Does the committee otherwise agree that we do not wish to make any recommendation on the amendment order?
Members indicated agreement.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Ariane Burgess
I would like to comment on Colin Smyth’s two amendments in this group. Amendment 109 would place a duty on ministers to produce
“Indicators and targets ... for measuring progress”
against the bill’s objectives. Measuring progress is crucial, which is why I am in conversation with the Scottish Government about requiring the rural support plan to set out, among other things, how the monitoring and evaluation of support will be implemented. I believe that that is a better solution than putting targets into legislation.
The Government has made strong calls for the ability to adjust trajectories and alter plans and policies, given the fast-changing nature of the climate and nature emergencies and the volatile global food system. Colin Smyth’s amendment 150 would require the Scottish Government to “publish a statement” with detail on the distributional impact of each support scheme. I fully support the intention to encourage the Scottish Government to consider social justice and a just transition when it is designing farm support schemes, which is why I have lodged amendments on redistribution and the front loading of payments.
However, amendment 150 would not require ministers to enact the redistribution. It requires them to only publish a statement about the redistribution of support schemes after the fact. In order to ensure that schemes are designed to achieve policy objectives, including thriving rural communities and a just transition to sustainable and regenerative agriculture, I am exploring an amendment for stage 3 that could require an external body to conduct an assessment of the public value that the support schemes would deliver. I believe that it would be preferable for the assessment to be done by an external body rather than by the Scottish Government. Looking at agricultural support with fresh eyes may produce a more objective assessment.
