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 925 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
Forestry and Land Scotland has to prepare the authorisation forms and send them in. NatureScot then has to process them. The forms are never declined; they are always accepted, so there is no need for that step to be taken.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
All deer, of either sex, do damage through overgrazing. By reducing male deer numbers we will reduce that impact, particularly in the season in which they are removed.
I think that you are alluding to the fact that, for long-term deer management, we also need to manage female deer numbers. I do not want to be distracted by this particular bit of legislation, which is, as we have discussed, one part of the 99 recommendations for updating deer management in Scotland. The other two items that we are discussing today, of course, apply to female deer, as do many of the items that come under those 99 recommendations.
The order is just one small piece of the puzzle of that picture. The measure was identified by the deer working group as an opportunity to reduce paperwork and align interests, and it recommended that we undertake it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
This measure is one piece of a much broader programme of work that the deer working group identified. The measure on its own will not help us to achieve the results that we need, but it is one piece of the puzzle that has been recommended to us, so I recommend it to you all as something that was proposed by the deer working group, based on its evidence. It allows land managers to do something that they are already doing, but with less paperwork. It gives them the choice, as part of our measures to increase the number of deer that are culled in Scotland, which we know that we need to do because of the growth in numbers.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
If we were to continue to allow its use, yes. It is with the manufacturer to bring forward its evidence. One reason why the emergency authorisation was rejected is that the manufacturer has been repeatedly asked to show the evidence that the product does not have that effect. If it can provide that information, and, as Rachael Hamilton said, it intends to do that research and share its evidence, that is fine. Once it does so, the matter can be reconsidered.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
All these measures are intended to make it easier to manage deer, and part of that involves giving land managers more tools to do so. This measure is part of the kit to allow that to happen.
As one measure on its own, it will not achieve that—it is part of the whole picture and is, relatively, such a small piece of the puzzle. It removes one bit of the administrative burden as part of a large programme and that is how it needs to be pictured. It may well increase the number of land managers who choose to manage in that way.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
The cull return information that NatureScot gets will be the same as it gets now—that is unchanged.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
That is correct.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Bracken Control
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Lorna Slater
That is to be decided. The James Hutton Institute provided an evidence review that identified all the gaps, which is now with the Scottish Government to think about how we want to move that forward. At the round table last week, we discussed the research priorities. I have committed to writing to the committee about how we intend to take forward that research.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Lorna Slater
The UK Government has had the opportunity to raise concerns at any time in the past three years, since our regulation was passed. I meet my counterparts at DEFRA monthly, when we discuss exactly those matters, and that level of detail has never been raised.
As I have already said, as recently as January, the UK Government was restating its position that the scope for deposit return schemes was a matter for the devolved nations. At no time before January, since the regulations were laid, did the UK raise any concerns about the details of Scotland’s scheme, although we all had an agreement that we would work together to make sure that the schemes were interoperable.
Of course, it is to everybody’s advantage to ensure that those schemes work well together. However, there is a big difference between ensuring that schemes work well together and being told that you have to comply with something that does not exist yet or even that you have to comply with something that has been created in Westminster and then imposed on us—in a devolved area.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Lorna Slater
In March, the gateway review identified that the lack of a decision on an IMA exclusion was a significant blocker to progress, as was the lack of a ruling by trading standards on shelf-edge labelling. Now, of course, as we have seen, the IMA exclusion risk that was identified has materialised, so we are working on the next steps.
