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 5714 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
You can come back to it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
Okay, but do you have any sense of the timing? You do not want a certain date, but will it be within a certain number of years or a certain—
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
I might not have picked you up correctly, but part of my question was about new schemes or new versions of schemes. I guess that this touches on Alasdair Allan’s question, which was about the Scottish statutory instruments. Is it your intention to create entirely new regulations to govern those schemes? If so, how will the powers be set out and how are you going to use them in your work on the rural support plan?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
That would be very welcome. The clear message that I get is that we need to pay strong attention to the route map, because that is telling us where we are going.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
I will just continue my point for now, because I am collecting my thoughts here. It is interesting to note that the BTO data has already been used, because I am going to reference it. It is an interesting piece that highlights that we can use data in different ways. My approach here is a precautionary one.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
The data that I have refers to moorland birds in the English, Welsh and Scottish uplands.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
That is right, is it not? I have information from NatureScot about breeding seasons and dates here. It is interesting that we can all use and cite the same data but come at it in a different way. As I said, my amendment seeks to take a precautionary approach and future proof the legislation. I understand that other amendments would shorten the season by only two weeks. I will listen carefully to the minister’s views.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
I listened carefully to your comments on my amendment 154. I am satisfied by your assurance that the methods to minimise damage will be explored through the muirburn code and training requirements, so I will not move my amendment.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
My amendment 154 would impose a new condition where a licence is granted in relation to peatland, requiring the person who is undertaking muirburn to do so in a way that minimises the damage to the peatland. As we know, healthy peatland is a vital resource in our efforts to reduce our climate emissions, as it locks up carbon.
The evidence base on muirburn and wildfires is contested, as we have already heard this evening. I remain concerned that escaped fires from muirburn could contribute to wildfires in Scotland’s uplands, creating risk to wildlife and habitats and risk of serious carbon emissions from damaged peat.
My amendment is a probing one. It seeks to require people with a licence to make muirburn on peatland to do so in a way that limits damage to the peatland. For example, studies in protected areas of Ontario in Canada have shown that burning peatland in linear strips can be effective at creating natural firebreaks in the landscape. Such an approach limits the damage to thin strips, whereas burning large patches of peatland is more common in Scotland.
My amendment does not prescribe that particular approach, as other similar methods are, no doubt, available. Rather, the intention is that the muirburn code would focus on muirburn methods that can be shown to minimise the damage to our important peatlands.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
It is great to hear that there is a small producers pilot fund, which I understand to be worth about £1 million. However, there are 40,000 small producers—people who operate at the scale of a croft, on under 3 hectares, and sell at market gardens—who really need support. How do you define small producers? What size of land being farmed are you talking about? We need to be really clear about that. I have talked to people who call themselves small producers but have 70 acres.
