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 2195 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
We would not be content with that, and I do not think that anybody would be content with it, if you were to look at the figure in that way. Obviously, we want mortality levels to be at the absolute lowest possible level. A variety of factors can have an impact throughout the cycle, but we would not be content with that and would want them to be at the absolute lowest level.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
I obviously want Scotland to produce the highest-quality product, but I disagree with the assertion that we are somehow more relaxed in our regulation. We can certainly make improvements to the process, which is why we are undertaking the programme of work that we have set out with the consenting task group to streamline the process. It is not about deregulating; we want to make sure that our regulation system and consenting processes are efficient, effective and transparent. It is not a fair comparison to say that we sit below the Faroe Islands and Norway when it comes to regulation.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
I come back to my previous response. It is not possible for me to give a definitive figure for what our mortality rate should be. Jill Barber highlighted that other countries are experiencing similar problems. We want to work to reduce the figure to the lowest possible level. That is why the work that we are doing through the farmed fish health framework and the other strands of work to try to identify the issues is vital.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
I know that the suggestion has been made. Obviously, we have in place agreements with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on how that funding will be distributed to coastal communities, and this is the agreement that we have in place here.
Of course, I welcome and am happy to consider any suggestions, but it is important to remember that, if we were to do what has been suggested, we would have to do so, and look at the community benefit, in conjunction with our local authority partners. We have been able to show how we, together with industry, can deliver this in some of the communities that I have mentioned, and I am keen to make sure that that work progresses.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
We received the Scottish Science Advisory Council report, and we are considering its recommendations and how we respond to it. We had quite a detailed discussion on it at the meeting of the Scottish Aquaculture Council last week, which was very helpful for our consideration.
You are talking about looking ahead and climate change. It is important that the frameworks that we have in place are adaptive and that we are able to look ahead and ensure that we have mechanisms that are flexible to the challenges that we might meet in the future. The farmed fish health strategic framework is important in that regard. A key strand of that work is looking at the challenges presented by climate change, and a few strands of work feed into that. We know that there will be more challenges in the future, so it is important that we have the capacity and capability to deal with them.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
I would be happy to provide the committee with more information on the implementation strategy, if it would find that helpful. We have timelines and reporting dates set out in that strategy that might be helpful for the committee to receive.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
We are looking at the challenges that you are talking about. I mentioned the need for an adaptable framework that we can alter as we get more information, research and data and respond to the innovations. We need a framework that can adapt and manage, and that is why the themes of work are being taken forward through the farmed fish health framework include climate change and other such areas. We have to look to the future. That work and what we do on climate change are already a key priority, and we continue to look at it. We are dealing with a really innovative industry and, obviously, I am keen to enable it as much as possible.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
We have not undertaken a risk assessment at the moment, but, as I have said, a huge number of pieces of work are under way, as should be clear from what has been set out against the recommendations as well as from previous inquiries. In that work, we are addressing some of the challenges that the industry currently faces and challenges that it will face in the future.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Salmon Farming
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Mairi Gougeon
Your question is in relation to the penalty fees that we receive for escapes. We have already made commitments as to what we would look to do with any increase in penalties, and work on that is on-going. We have also outlined some of the work that we need to do in the implementation plan for the wild salmon strategy that we published earlier this year. We said initially that we would be looking to ring fence any moneys received from that to support research into wild salmon and any work that needs to be taken forward on that. However, that work still needs to be undertaken, so we have not made any firm decisions yet.
