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 5987 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
There will be a division.
For
Burgess, Ariane (Highlands and Islands) (Green)
Gallacher, Meghan (Central Scotland) (Con)
Griffin, Mark (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Stewart, Alexander (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Against
Coffey, Willie (Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley) (SNP)
Roddick, Emma (Highlands and Islands) (SNP)
Stevenson, Collette (East Kilbride) (SNP)
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
There will be a division.
For
Burgess, Ariane (Highlands and Islands) (Green)
Against
Coffey, Willie (Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley) (SNP)
Gallacher, Meghan (Central Scotland) (Con)
Griffin, Mark (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Roddick, Emma (Highlands and Islands) (SNP)
Stevenson, Collette (East Kilbride) (SNP)
Stewart, Alexander (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
There will be a division.
For
Coffey, Willie (Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley) (SNP)
Gallacher, Meghan (Central Scotland) (Con)
Griffin, Mark (Central Scotland) (Lab)
Roddick, Emma (Highlands and Islands) (SNP)
Stevenson, Collette (East Kilbride) (SNP)
Stewart, Alexander (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Abstentions
Burgess, Ariane (Highlands and Islands) (Green)
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
The question is, that amendment 406 be agreed to. Are we agreed?
Members: No.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
I call Emma Roddick to wind up and to press or withdraw amendment 230.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
The second item on our agenda is day 7 of our consideration of the Housing (Scotland) Bill at stage 2. I welcome the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and her officials.
Members who wish to speak should indicate that by catching my or the clerk’s attention. Voting will be done by a show of hands, and it is important that members keep their hands clearly raised until the clerk has recorded their names.
After section 51
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
Thank you, convener, for your warm welcome to the committee.
The Green amendments in the group seek to strengthen the provisions on land management plans. Amendment 338 is the most critical and strengthens the duty on landowners from being one of simply preparing land management plans—which I am going to call LMPs so that I do not have to tongue twist “land management plans” a lot—to one of actually implementing LMPs. If plans are prepared but just languish on the shelf, no progress will be made in giving communities a greater say in how land is actually used and it also hinders large landholdings being managed for climate and nature, an idea that was central to the Government’s public consultation in 2023. We certainly cannot have that loophole in the bill.
My amendment 337 would increase the time period to be covered by an LMP from five to 20 years. If, as the Government intended when it consulted on the bill, LMPs are to be a key tool in delivering progress on climate and nature targets, they must take into account the fact that many actions require longer timescales. It could be a decade before some actions begin to produce positive effects for climate and nature, so having longer-term LMPs would mean that climate-positive actions would have time to come to fruition and would be less likely to be chopped and changed every five years. My amendment 311 is consequential to that and my amendments 313 and 314 would ensure that LMPs would still be reviewed every five years, with communities being consulted on developments and revisions.
Finally, my amendment 316 would add a requirement for landowners to submit a report to the land and communities commissioner at the five-year point, ensuring that there is oversight of plans being delivered across 20 years.
I will comment briefly on some other amendments. I am certainly supportive of Bob Doris’s amendments 16, 17 and 20, and probably his amendment 33. I would be interested in understanding why Rhoda Grant believes that amendment 312 is needed and will listen carefully to what she says about amendments 335 and 340 to understand their purpose.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
I am delighted to join Mercedes Villalba in suggesting that to Douglas Lumsden.
Another interesting aspect that is in play is that the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024, which some of us worked on, requires there to be a whole-farm plan. As my colleague Mark Ruskell pointed out, there is enthusiasm and energy among farmers, but there is also a requirement for whole-farm plans to be produced. The work, data and information are already there. Land management plans will ask for that information to be shared with neighbouring communities so that they can have a say, be involved and feel that they have a connection to what is happening on the land around them.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
Amendments 3 and 4, alongside amendments in later groups, seek to lower the threshold to 500 hectares. That would bring significantly more land into the scope of the bill, furthering Scotland’s progress on land reform. I recognise that the cabinet secretary said that that could happen at a future date and that the Scottish Government is keen to monitor the situation with the threshold set at 1,000 hectares. However, the Scottish Land Commission’s research suggests that 93 per cent of land sales are for areas that are greater than 500 hectares, so that would be a proportionate change to the threshold.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Ariane Burgess
As I have just said, the Scottish Land Commission’s research suggests that 93 per cent of land sales are for areas that are greater than 500 hectares, so it would be a proportionate change to the threshold. It would also increase the number of landholdings that we would require to produce land management plans, which would give more communities a voice in the management of local land. We believe that that is at the heart of it.
I am grateful to Mercedes Villalba for her work on thresholds. Over the years, she has bought the issue strongly into the public discourse, and I am grateful that she will support my amendments 3 and 4. I note that the Government’s amendments would reduce the threshold to 1,000 hectares, and I understand that the cabinet secretary has lodged amendments to harmonise the thresholds of 3,000 hectares and 1,000 hectares for simplicity’s sake. I appreciate that it makes sense to have clarity and one threshold for everything.
To go back to our earlier conversation about the national concentration of land ownership, I do not want to put words into her mouth, but I believe that what Mercedes Villalba is trying to get at is the concern about land that is under the threshold being owned by the same landowner but being scattered all over Scotland. We absolutely need to address that and bring it into scope, although not necessarily in the bill. However, I would like to hear the Scottish Government’s assurances about what we can do to address the issue.
I understand all the relevant aspects, such as compulsory sales orders, compulsory purchase orders and the community right to buy review, but we need to address the issue collectively and find a way forward. It is not necessarily about more communities taking ownership of land; it is about how we address the issue of aggregate holdings and, in a way, their power over Scotland.
