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 1430 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
This is a new game to me, but I understand that major international companies are involved. Who are those companies? They are not small businesses; they are major international companies. Can you name them for me? I do not know who they are.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
Yes—who are the key international companies that do factory salmon farming in Scotland?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
Those companies are actually monitoring themselves and providing the data. They may have a mandatory obligation in law, but they are not independently assessed to establish whether the data is correct.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
I will move on to the issue of mortality, but I will start with a quote from the review by Professor Griggs that was published in February 2022. He stated:
“Throughout the evidence gathering stage of this review a lot of what I have heard and seen resonates with other reviews of this type I have carried out.”
He went on:
“However in all the reviews I have conducted over the years, there are two characteristics that I have never come across before”.
One of those was:
“All the people and organisations that I have met with or had input from think that the current regulatory system for aquaculture is not fit for purpose”.
That is significant. This is a man who has done lots of reviews, and that seems to have taken him by surprise. It is quite a shocking statement.
That brings me on to mortality. I am interested in the welfare of animals, and we are talking about the factory farming of fin fish. What are the most recent figures for the mortality rate in salmon farming?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
The topic is one of mine, but I thought that I would ask the question now, as we are already on it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
Professor Griggs asked for independent scientific evidence. That was one of his calls. Are you pursuing that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
Let us take the maximum mortality rate, which is 25 per cent. How is that checked? I am trying to find out how that is verified independently, because I am not too happy about self-regulation. How is it done? When the figures come in, does someone in the fish health inspectorate say, “I think we should go and check all this stuff on site,” or do they simply check the data? How do they do it?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
We had better send a note of what was said in private. A note saying that queries have been raised could usefully be sent in advance to the Government, if appropriate, and circulated to the committee.
It is a matter for the Government to decide. Committees have priority, and there may have to be—I say this with inverted commas around it—a “political decision” at the end of the evidence session about what they do or do not do with the regulation. Therefore, I am not happy that it would be just an official.
I was not party to the original discussion, although I listened to it, or to the queries that were raised by members around this table. Perhaps they could be circulated and sent to the Government in a letter saying, “These are the problems that we have. It will be a brief session, but we would like clarity,” and so on.
Meeting of the Parliament
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Christine Grahame
It is an afternoon for that.
Meeting of the Parliament
Decision Time
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Christine Grahame
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I am terribly sorry to return to something that I raised last week, but I seek your guidance. Once again, at decision time we have only three Conservative members in the chamber. I wonder whether you would consider looking at the issue of attendance at Parliament in person rather than remotely, unless there is good reason for it.
