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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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
I am glad that it is being considered somewhere.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
We have been asking questions about the four objectives of agricultural policy. I come back to the word “regenerative”, and the tensions that my colleague Kate Forbes brought up.
One thing in particular struck me when I was looking at the four objectives. Taking a broad-brush definition of “regenerative”, my understanding of why producers have moved away from talking about sustainable practice is that, given that nature has degraded so much and we are facing such massive issues around meeting our climate emissions targets, simply sustaining our practices is no longer possible, so we need to be doing regenerative agriculture. My understanding of that is that it means practising a form of agriculture that supports the natural environment to regenerate, while meeting human needs.
It is interesting to me that that is set out as a separate thing. I would have thought that regenerative agriculture policy practices would give us high-quality food and lead to nature restoration and climate mitigation and adaptation—you spoke to that a little bit—and would support enabling rural communities to thrive.
I would like to hear a bit about your thinking around regenerative agriculture. I know that you want to keep the objectives broad for possible changes, depending on circumstances in the future, but I want to understand how you see that objective connecting to all the policies that underpin it.
My colleague Kate Forbes referred to sustainable agriculture in a way that implied economic sustainability. We really need to be talking about sustainable and regenerative agriculture in terms of what we are doing for nature restoration and for climate adaptation and mitigation.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
It says in our papers:
“Ministers may amend the plan if strategic priorities change or the plan becomes inaccurate or incomplete”.
We have already discussed the need for flexibility in the face of the climate and nature emergency, but I just wanted to hear how you have thought that need through. What kinds of things would trigger the review of a plan? I just want to understand your thinking in that respect.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
I will follow on from Rhoda Grant’s questions on the public interest. Is that in writing anywhere? Is there a set of criteria for what is in the public interest?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
It would not get there. Perhaps that was not the best example, but what I am trying to get at is that the direction of travel that we need to go in involves regenerative practices and supporting nature and climate mitigation and adaptation, so if somebody were to apply to a support scheme, I imagine that a criterion under the scheme would be to ensure that people were not continuing with practices in the opposite direction to what was sought to be achieved through the objectives.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
It seems to me that we will need to get that sorted out, if it is the basis on which people will get payments. As you have said, practices have changed.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Will sufficient funding be provided for that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
You say that there is a definition in the route map, but it will be the ordinary meaning that is relevant to the bill, so what is the ordinary meaning of regenerative?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
I have a question on the same area. The bill says that ministers have to have regard to developments in law and policy in the European Union. Will that facilitate alignment with the EU CAP? Specifically, will the tier 1 minimum production standards to protect the environment, animal welfare and fair work, as referred to in the policy memorandum, align with EU conditions on base-level support?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
In your response to Rhoda Grant, you mentioned a commitment to a “review of the regions”. I imagine that you were referring to the payment regions. Is that what you were referring to? That is an important issue, which was raised on our recent visit to the Scotland’s Rural College farms at Crianlarich, where it was pointed out that it is possible to have two identical land holdings right next to each other, but one can receive higher payments than the other if it had a higher headage when the payment regions were established. Will you be sorting out those kinds of discrepancies in the review?
