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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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Finlay Carson
We have a brief supplementary from Mark Ruskell, and then we will move on to the next question from Elena Whitham.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Finlay Carson
I will briefly suspend the meeting for a comfort break of, I hope, less than five minutes.
10:29 Meeting suspended.10:36 On resuming—
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Finlay Carson
Welcome back. Our next questions are on part 2 of the bill, “Power to modify or restate environmental impact assessment legislation and habitats regulations”.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Finlay Carson
Before Mark Ruskell asks his next question, I should say that Scottish Renewables was invited to attend but was not available.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Finlay Carson
Before we move away from the subject of national parks, I want to touch on what is not in the bill in that regard. Everyone will be aware of the controversy about the potential designation of a national park in Galloway. There is concern about how the decision that Galloway would be the sole contender for that designation was arrived at, and the lack of transparency about or understanding of how we got to that point. There is nothing in the legislation that sets out the route for an area to be identified as a candidate for a national park.
Whichever side of the argument people are on—whether they are pro or anti national parks—I do not think that there is any doubt that the process has been a car crash that has caused a lot of division. There are many polarised views. Ultimately, the process has totally derailed what should have been a very positive experience and one that was similar to the experience 25 years ago, when the first designations took place. At the weekend, we heard from stakeholders that 300 or 400 businesses got very actively involved in setting up the Cairngorms national park, and we heard how businesses, individuals and communities played a massive part in that. With the proposed Galloway national park, that has been completely absent.
There has not been a clear indication of what the proposed national park would be. Should there be something in legislation to make clearer the Government’s obligations to ensure that the process to designate new national parks is more engaging and contains more information? One of the problems is that there is a massive vacuum in relation to how the new national park might look. We are always told that Galloway is an area of intensive forestry, intensive farming and intensive renewables, which is unlike any other national park in the world. We are told that it will be different, but not in what way. Should the legislation on national parks have contained more direction on future policy on the designation of parks, given the mess that the current process is in?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Finlay Carson
Before we move away from the subject of national parks, I want to touch on what is not in the bill in that regard. Everyone will be aware of the controversy about the potential designation of a national park in Galloway. There is concern about how the decision that Galloway would be the sole contender for that designation was arrived at, and the lack of transparency about or understanding of how we got to that point. There is nothing in the legislation that sets out the route for an area to be identified as a candidate for a national park.
Whichever side of the argument people are on—whether they are pro or anti national parks—I do not think that there is any doubt that the process has been a car crash that has caused a lot of division. There are many polarised views. Ultimately, the process has totally derailed what should have been a very positive experience and one that was similar to the experience 25 years ago, when the first designations took place. At the weekend, we heard from stakeholders that 300 or 400 businesses got very actively involved in setting up the Cairngorms national park, and we heard how businesses, individuals and communities played a massive part in that. With the proposed Galloway national park, that has been completely absent.
There has not been a clear indication of what the proposed national park would be. Should there be something in legislation to make clearer the Government’s obligations to ensure that the process to designate new national parks is more engaging and contains more information? One of the problems is that there is a massive vacuum in relation to how the new national park might look. We are always told that Galloway is an area of intensive forestry, intensive farming and intensive renewables, which is unlike any other national park in the world. We are told that it will be different, but not in what way. Should the legislation on national parks have contained more direction on future policy on the designation of parks, given the mess that the current process is in?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Finlay Carson
If Professor Tett wishes to come in, I am sure that we can bring him in after the next question.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Finlay Carson
As part of the salmon inquiry, we were informed about the pilots of the single-case flow approach, which co-ordinated SEPA’s CAR licensing process, along with local authorities. That was on-going in Shetland and the Highlands. The independent valuation was supposed to be published in April, but that has not been done yet, as far as I am aware.
On SEPA’s responsibility, the Scottish Government says:
“Work is underway to consider how best to implement assessment and regulation of fish farm discharges between 3-12 nautical miles”.
Do we have the cart before the horse? Are we looking to approve an SSI before the work has been done to allow those applications to navigate that process successfully?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Finlay Carson
Beatrice Wishart has a brief supplementary, then we will go back to Tim Eagle.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Finlay Carson
Good morning, and welcome to the 16th meeting in 2025 of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee. Before we begin, please ensure that all electronic devices are switched to silent.
I welcome back to the committee Mercedes Villalba, who will join us for agenda item 1.
The first item is consideration of the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill at stage 1. At today’s meeting, we will take evidence from a panel of representatives from environmental non-governmental organisations. I welcome to the meeting Rea Cris from Open Seas, Calum Duncan from the Marine Conservation Society, Dr Nick Hesford from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, Dan Paris from Scottish Environmental LINK, Nikki Sinclair from Action to Protect Rural Scotland, Ailis Watt from RSPB Scotland, and Bruce Wilson from the Scottish Wildlife Trust.
We have allocated about two hours for the discussion. That seems like a long time, but we have an awful lot of questions and a lot of witnesses, so I ask everyone to be succinct in their questions and answers. There will be some questions that just warrant a yes or a no response. Please indicate to the clerk or to me if you wish to participate, but there is no expectation that everybody will participate in every question; if they did, two hours would not be adequate. Likewise, if you feel that part of the discussion does not relate to your area of expertise, do not feel that you need to answer.
You will not need to operate your microphones; we have a gentleman here who will do that for you.
We will kick off with a nice, easy question. Do you support the introduction of statutory biodiversity targets? If so, what impact do you expect those legal targets to have in practice, compared with the current approach? Are you satisfied that those targets should be set in secondary legislation?
