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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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Planning Inquiry (Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015)
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
You are on mute at the moment. We will get your microphone on for you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Planning Inquiry (Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015)
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
We will move on to our next theme, which is community empowerment. Mark Griffin is leading on that.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Planning Inquiry (Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015)
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
The next item on our agenda is to take evidence on the community planning inquiry. This is the final evidence session before we reflect on all the evidence that we have heard in recent months and consider what conclusions we might draw from it. A final report will then go from the committee to the Scottish Government.
We are joined for this session by Joe FitzPatrick, Minister for Local Government Empowerment and Planning. Mr FitzPatrick is joined by Scottish Government officials Andrew Connal and David Milne, who are both team leaders in public service reform and community planning.
We are joined online by Councillor Steven Heddle, who is vice-president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. Councillor Heddle is joined, also online, by Simon Cameron, chief officer, and Lucy Devlin, policy assistant, of the workforce and corporate policy team of COSLA. I welcome all our witnesses this morning.
We will try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but if you would like to come in, please indicate so to the clerks. Councillor Heddle, you can do that by typing R into the chat function, and then we will bring you in. There is no need for witnesses to manually turn their microphones on and off, as we will be doing that automatically for them.
I invite the minister to make a brief opening statement.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Planning Inquiry (Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015)
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
That is fine.
I will come to the minister. I have focused on community wealth building, because that is my passion at the moment, but I have a general question about the role you see CPPs having in the proposed community wealth building bill, as well as in relation to Covid recovery and the new deal for local government.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Planning Inquiry (Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015)
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
The question was about funding. Did you hear it or do you want me to ask it again?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Community Planning Inquiry (Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015)
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
It is good to hear that about community wealth building. My sense is that there is a buzz in Scotland and that people are already pushing the process as they are eager to get on with a tremendous opportunity. It is also great to hear about the work following our experience during the pandemic. You talked about dynamic working, and it is great to hear that that experience has fed into changes and adaptations.
Councillor Heddle, I believe that you want to come back in. After that, we will move on to the next theme.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
That is probably something that we should take away. We should reflect seriously on the idea of food being part of our national security, given how events have brought that idea to the fore.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
Is anyone else able to take that question? Maybe no one else was paying attention because I said that it was for David. Will livestock production be more at risk from climate change than other farming sectors, because of heat stress in animals and a shortage of forage? If that is the case, how can the sector adapt to climate impacts while minimising its contribution to climate change?
It seems that those questions were too geeky for people. Brilliant—we have some takers. We will hear from Morgan Vaughan, then Tim Benton.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thank you for that response. I will move on to question 4, on resilience, if that is appropriate. My question follows on from what Tim Benton was just saying. I am sorry if that muddles things up, deputy convener.
I will stick with Tim Benton, because you said that you could talk about this all day. You have touched on this, but it would be good to continue with the idea of food security. The papers for today’s meeting make it clear that ecosystem resilience affects food security and the resilience of farm businesses, which you have been talking about.
Our nation’s ability to continue producing food and feeding our citizens depends on working within planetary boundaries. You have described two ways of doing that: intensive farming and working with nature. What do we need to see in our agriculture and land use policy, including in the agriculture bill—which I keep coming back to, because I really want us to get it right—and what should be the criteria for support in the future payment framework in order to ensure long-term food security? What do we need to see in the payment systems?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Ariane Burgess
Yes. My question comes back to questions around ecosystems and food security in Scotland. I will direct it to Morgan Vaughan and Ian Boyd-Livingston. In the papers that we received for today’s meeting, there is the statement that
“agroecological approaches can provide sufficient nutrients for healthy diets without impinging on natural habitats”.
However, we are told that
“these assumptions imply systemic change which, while possible, would require significant political and social shifts, and shifts in production systems to support e.g. more fruit and vegetable production.”
What do we need to see in the bill or in the criteria for support payments to incentivise the required political and social shifts and a shift towards more fruit and vegetable production?
