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 2099 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
The key thing about REM is that it is an important tool for compliance and enforcement. It is really important that we have that element. I have a huge respect for our industry and the really good job that it does to provide us with a low carbon source of protein. However, there are instances of activity that we need to tackle and get to grips with and, ultimately, the roll-out of REM will help to achieve that.
In the past few weeks, our aerial surveillance caught an incident of quite a large quantity of dead pelagic fish on the surface of the water. If we were hoping to catch the people who could be responsible for that, we would be dependent on catching them in the act, which, as I am sure you can imagine, is incredibly difficult given the sheer size of the marine area that we have to cover with our compliance monitoring, whether that is vessel monitoring or aerial surveillance. REM will be a game changer in that respect, as I said in my opening remarks, as it will allow us to tackle the activity where we have seen it take place. It is very important in that regard.
In my opening comments, I touched on just how important REM is for the reputation of our seafood as a whole and what that means for retailers. We had responses to our consultation on the VMS from the Marine Stewardship Council and responses to the consultation on REM from the likes of Marks and Spencer, and all of them have said that it needs to be rolled out across the whole fleet because it enhances our reputation for sustainable fisheries and gives us the ability to show that process. They think that it can give us a market advantage, too—indeed, it has spin-off benefits.
The science element—the evidence that we can gather from the data that we are collecting—is also important. As the regulations bed in, we can start to develop and use the picture of all the information that we are receiving from that data to underpin the science that we use for fisheries management. What we can look to gain from that is quite exciting.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Jane MacPherson highlighted the process that would be gone through. Would you like her to repeat that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
I will bring in Ellen Huis on that point.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
We are happy to talk more about some of the engagement that has taken place, if you would like to hear about that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
The regulations that we have brought forward have been largely based on the experience that we have had so far. The vast majority of the scallop dredge fleet has REM systems on board. We do not anticipate too many issues in that regard, but that is exactly why we have regulations that set out, for example, what happens if there is a first breakdown and should that happen again.
The 28-day grace period that you mentioned is important. You are absolutely right that we received a variety of different views on that. Some people think that the period is too long, but we think that the approach is a realistic and balanced one that could allow any necessary work to take place. Again, that is based on the experience that we have had so far. I believe that we have reached the right balance in the regulations.
I think that Ellen Huis wants to add a point to that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Again, that is in relation to the data transmission requirements. I will pass over to Jane MacPherson, who can provide more information on that point.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
They are handled slightly differently, because the technology that they have on board is different. That is why the scallop vessels have a 28-day grace period. They do not have satellite technology on board; often, they are more reliant on a mobile phone signal or wi-fi to transmit the data. That is why their data is stored on the REM device and uploaded only at the next available opportunity. However, we have not seen any particular issue in relation to that. The two segments are different—they operate in different ways—which is why we have that difference in approach.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
We are going down a lot of hypotheticals. Again, all of this is about getting the balance right so that we do not undermine the objectives we are trying to achieve with the SSI. It is also about ensuring that we have the ability to deal with any problems that arise, which is why the regulations that Jane MacPherson set out and talked through, and the way that they are structured, are so important.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
We have set out that we believe that we have the capacity and the resources to deal with that. Any expected or anticipated costs have been set out in the information in the BRIA, but of course we would continue to keep those under review.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Absolutely. It would be beneficial on all those fronts. I also mentioned the spatial element. We know that the data that we collect will be partly personal or commercially sensitive data, which we have to be very careful with. However, we would aim to aggregate and anonymise it and potentially make it publicly available, as it would be useful information for people in many areas to have.
