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 1957 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Thank you.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
That is really helpful. Thank you. I take the opportunity to say that this has been a really useful session.
I understand that the approaches are very similar. They bring together urban and rural, industry and tourism; they prioritise goals for water quality and wildlife; and they basically look at the land use strategy. Bearing in mind what has been said about the regional approach, what work have you been doing that could help to create a future agricultural payments scheme? How do you envisage all the stakeholders who are trying to reach the same goal being part of that payments scheme?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I have asked my question on that specific section, convener.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
On 13 May 2022, I visited a grouse moor in my constituency of Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire. The owners practise managed muirburn and they have an active grouse moor below which is a farmer who has a lowland farm of mixed livestock enterprise. I will read to you a list of what I saw on that day: lapwing, oyster catcher, curlew, golden plover, snipe, heron, red-legged partridge, black grouse, red grouse, corvids, meadow pipit and whinchat. I have never seen such a large amount of biodiversity in my entire life, and it was a fabulous experience. That proved to me that a managed farm, a decent stocking density and the rest of it, including the managed upland, was working. I just wanted to make that point.
My question is on where the biodiversity loss is occurring. Are we calculating biodiversity loss across Scotland and the islands, including marine, when we talk about these things, or are you talking specifically about agriculture when you cite intensification? The 60 per cent decline in curlew numbers is twice the rate of the decline in England. Why is that the case if we have similar agricultural practices? Is the agri-environment climate scheme reversing biodiversity loss?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Can I ask Ross Lilley about AECS?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
The James Hutton Institute did some work on the increase in biodiversity that came about from certain actions. For example, it found that, where there was woodland and scrub, there was an increased number of biodiversity species but there was also a loss of meadow pipit and merlin. How do you prioritise one species over another in the actions proposed by the Government? Have you done any modelling on loss and gain?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
First, I am going to ask you a broad question. What is the difference between a catchment management approach and a landscape-scale approach?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
You talked about streamlining the process that we use to look at agriculture outputs. Last night in Parliament, the committee met representatives from Farming for 1.5°C, and I asked the question of which measure of global warming potential we should use to calculate methane emissions—GWP100 or GWP*—and there was an overwhelming consensus that we use one calculation rather than both, because that is skewing the data. What is your opinion on that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
I think that you have probably answered my question about the flexibility. I was going to ask you whether, within the free trade deal, this is one way of ensuring that New Zealand can export multiple grape varieties, which it probably does not do at the moment. The main varieties are probably Pinot Noir, Merlot and Sauvignon—we have a great taste for those in the UK—and there is the issue of the alcohol content, too. I assume that, as you say, this provides flexibility.
However, within a free trade agreement, surely it also removes the burden of labelling and provides help with that to allow greater choice, which provides flexibility. I presume that that makes a great free trade deal and that that is one of the negotiations that they had. Weather might also affect the grape variety and the alcohol content.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Rachael Hamilton
Good.
