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
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
In relation to your point about the draft allocation of funding, in particular, just in recent weeks—as you will be aware—we have provided an overall outline of what that budget split might look like, to provide some of that clarity.
What holds us back from allocating budgets and from budget certainty is that we do not have budget certainty going forward. It is not possible for me to set out what the envelopes might be against that when I do not have that information.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
It is not possible for me to make a commitment on multi-annual funding when I have absolutely no clarity on our allocation from the United Kingdom Government beyond next year. It would be irresponsible of me to make commitments around that when I do not know what that quantum of funding will be. We have set out what the overall broad spectrum of the envelopes might look like across the tiers, but it is not possible for us to do that in detail.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
We set that out more broadly because it covers what we currently fund by direct payments and how that is split across the future tiers of the framework. As we have set out, tiers 1 and 2—the base-level support and the enhanced tier—will be the direct element of that funding. When we introduce the enhanced tier in 2026, we will be able to drive a huge amount of the change that we want, including more measures on reducing emissions and enhancing nature.
We want to give our farmers clarity and certainty about what to expect, which is why we said that we have committed to maintaining direct payments now and into the future and to maintaining that base level of support. We want to continue to support food production, and we want to be able to use the quantum of funding that we have to do more through that enhanced tier.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
That is the overall quantum of funding, not the figures. As I have said, that aligns with what we have in direct payments at the moment, so the direct payments would include that. NFU Scotland advocated for 80 per cent of the overall funding, including the less favoured area support scheme, which would not be part of pillar 1 support. We are considering what that support will look like.
If you are pressing me for figures, I do not know what funding there will be from 2025.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
That is what I have tried to illustrate by talking about some of the definitions that we have put out there. You are absolutely right that the term can mean different things to different people. As I set out at the very start, it is a collection of different measures. I have also made the point that you just made, that every business is different and we need flexibility to be able to adapt to that.
The code is not something that we will conjure up ourselves, suddenly introduce and expect everyone to comply with. It is about working with people to develop a code of practice that works for everyone. It is not in our best interests to exclude, for example, the 18,000-odd businesses that are currently part of our agricultural payment system. We do not want to lock people out—it is a journey, and it is about taking people with us on that journey, which is why we have made the commitments that we have made. I want to be clear that it is certainly not the intention to lock people out.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Ideally, we would want to commit to multi-annual funding agreements, but I am not in that position today because I do not have any certainty. However, going forward, we want to make sure that we are providing as much certainty and clarity to the industry as possible. Let us face it: if we were still members of the EU, we would have had a seven-year period in which we could plan for the future and what the schemes would look like. When we had that, everybody knew what they were going to get over that period and it was all set out. We are in a very different state of affairs at the moment, so it is not possible for me to say what funding is going to look like or to make those commitments, because I do not have that information and I have not been given any of that certainty.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Precisely because it gives us the flexibility to adapt the schemes and develop them in a way in which we think will deliver against the objectives that we have set out. There have been calls for there to be a rebasing of LFASS. We want to continue with support of that type because it is so important for our farmers and crofters in the most rural parts of Scotland. We must design the schemes with farmers and crofters and develop a support system that is going to work. One of the schemes that has ultimately delivered on its objectives—I am sure that my officials will correct me if I am wrong—is the agri-environment climate scheme. We could potentially look at what some of the measures might look like, which could form part of a potential enhanced conditionality in the tier 2 measures. It is about how we design those schemes, but, ultimately, we need to design them with the people who are most impacted by them.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
A number of targets are listed elsewhere, particularly in relation to emissions reduction, and we know that that is also being considered through the natural environment bill. For me, it is not necessarily about introducing new targets. What will be critical, as I have outlined in previous responses, is the monitoring and evaluation of targets. We already have statutory targets to meet, so it is about how we set out the pathway to achieving them.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
I am happy to follow up with the committee on the work that we have already published in that regard, if that would be helpful.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Ideally, we would like more funding than we have at the moment. NFU Scotland has called for £1 billion-worth of funding from the UK Government, and I support that call. I listened to the NFU’s conference down south recently, and it is asking for £4.5 billion rather than the £2.4 billion that it has been given by the UK Government.
I think that we are entitled to more support than we currently receive. Considering the potential for what we can do for climate and nature, we should receive more funding than we currently do. That funding has remained static over the past few years, so we hope for and would welcome any increase to that.
