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 2121 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
I am not responsible for SDS, but it is important that we work together across Government to address such challenges. In my previous response, I did not mention our establishment of the commission for the land-based learning review. Other reviews have taken place around the skills landscape, including the Withers review. I will work with my colleagues to consider the outcome and recommendations of each of those reviews to see how we can address those issues as a whole. It is not as if portfolios will work in isolation, because we know that we need to address particular gaps in our islands and rural areas. We want more people to come into the sectors that are important for those areas.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
Absolutely.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
Sorry—do you mean in relation to the future framework, once it is fully in place?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
Absolutely. I stress that work on that is going on all the time. The islands team engages with other portfolios across Government all the time, on different aspects of the work.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
We are still in line with the commitment and we still intend to publish the action plan this year.
As I said, we have been looking at the on-going commitments that we already have, and we have resourced those through the islands programme resource funding, community settlement officers and various other projects and pilots. I am not going to pre-empt what will come out of that, but we will also work jointly with the population team.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
There have been various calls from different organisations on what should be more heavily weighted, but the fact is that we have committed to a process of co-development with our farmers and crofters. I will not pre-empt the discussions that we will have on that, but we do not have any certainty on our future budgets in that regard.
You will, no doubt, be aware of the other commitments on maintaining direct payments. We know how important it is to continue that support for our farmers and for food production, which we have previously stated. We have not yet come to a decision on an overall budget split, because it is an important part of the co-development process.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
You can see from the published budget how our spending for agricultural funding is used. George Burgess may have information about the specific £60 million.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
That is the point that George Burgess is making. The way in which that money is returned to the portfolio would be subject to my discussions with the Deputy First Minister. We are yet to discuss that. The £33 million that you refer to came up in a previous discussion. We are still to agree on how that will be returned to the portfolio. Because ring-fenced funding is ring fenced, it must be returned to the portfolio.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
Yes.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Mairi Gougeon
We know that the agri-environment climate scheme largely delivers on its objectives. It has been a really important scheme for our farmers. I emphasise that that is where we are currently working. The national test programme is in place to offer an incentive for businesses, if they are not doing so already, to look at their performance in relation to carbon audits and soil testing. We have also provided funding this year for animal health and welfare plans, and we want to expand that in the future. It is important that individual businesses get their own baseline information to see how they can improve from that point.
Funding does not come only from that scheme. You will be aware, as I am when I visit farms and crofts across the country, of the different actions that are being undertaken and the work that is already under way to reduce emissions and enhance nature. The coming agriculture bill will set out the overall powers that are needed to establish a framework for future payments, and there is more detail to come about that.
