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
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
Which question are we on, convener?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
Colleagues probably know this but, for the record, it would be helpful to understand what numbers we are talking about. I understand that there are about 2,100 registered fishing vessels, but how does that number break down into creelers and others? I know that there are 21 pelagic boats, but what is the mix with the other types?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
I want to follow that up. The Bute house agreement covers highly protected marine areas. You have said that 58 per cent of the sea bed is highly damaged and that the intention is for a Lamlash Bay-type approach with a no-take zone.
One of the things that has come out of today’s session is that this is not about having a blanket 3-mile limit—the approach is more nuanced than that. It seems to me that we would need some places around the coastline where there are no-take zones. I am interested in hearing your reflections on how we could fit that into the spatial management mix.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
You have talked a bit about the Fisheries Act 2020 and you have mentioned good environmental status. Will you explain what is meant by an ecosystems approach, as is set out in the act, and how that relates to good environmental status? Will you also touch a bit more on whether, in your view, Scotland’s fisheries management is compliant with an ecosystems approach?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
In its response to the petition, the Scottish Government stated that it has a “tailored approach” to inshore management. What are your thoughts on what that means? Is the approach tailored to achieving ecosystem management and good environmental status for the foreseeable future?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
I would like to get a bit more detail on the stuff that you have already started to touch on. You said that a limit would not necessarily extend around Scotland as a blanket approach. I heard recently, for example, that it might not be needed in Shetland, because the sea bed is already so abraded by a dynamic sea.
I am also interested in hearing whether there are ways other than distance in which we could set a limit. I have heard something about measuring by depth; you have talked about that a bit. For example, you said that creelers go out to 12 miles on the east coast, but only 3 miles on the west coast.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
Can I clarify that, when you are talking about spatial management, you mean the management of how one type of gear can work in one place and another gear can work in another? Is that part of it?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
That is a good approach. My one concern is that we should get clarity. When you asked Bally Philp about the marine plan, I think he said that the existing marine plan did not really deal with fisheries. I want us to get assurances that the existing plan covers fisheries and that the future plan that the Government is considering will include fisheries in the mix.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Petition
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
Okay—thank you.
Mr Philp, you have started to talk about all the different components that would need to be in the mix. It is not just the 3-mile limit—there are other elements that would need to be part of that. Perhaps you could talk about other ideas for minimising gear conflict that might work alongside a 3-mile limit or the spatial management measures that you mentioned, such as the inner sound pilot, territorial rights and that kind of thing.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Ariane Burgess
You raise a really good point about seasonality, with the end of summer being a busy season. Through the work that you are doing with the industry advisory group—we will go into that in more detail later—is there a way of encouraging people to apply ahead of the deadline in order to minimise the delay?
