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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 2161 contributions
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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
I apologise.
Jonnie, you said that farmers in England are taking a step back. Given the amount of support that is required to keep farming in Scotland viable, how do farmers take a step back if they do not like the policy?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
In effect, then, what you are saying is that, for the whole supply chain to work, you cannot try to find a solution for each individual bit—you have to look at the whole system that is in place.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
We have roamed about on this issue, but I want to go back to the opportunities for the food and drink sector that you touched on in response to Ariane Burgess.
With regard to farmers’ ability to diversify, the CCC said last week that we needed to reduce numbers and all the rest of it, and, in that respect, I am very glad that you have mentioned critical mass, because that is the bit that I want to talk about. What if, for instance, we decided to say, “Right, we’re going to pay £1,000 for every calf that’s born on a hill, but you need to reduce the numbers of suckler cows that you produce by 20 or 30 per cent”? What would be the net effect of targeting just one specific problem in that way?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
In what sense?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
That is the question that I am asking you.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
I have a brief question for Ross Lilley. You said that the Government does not have the level of data that it needs. As a farmer, I used to have a crop plan every year and I knew what was going into every single field and what I was going to do in that field, based on the soil analysis that I had done and what I was looking to achieve. Is there not a way that you or the data gatherers could speak to the farming community? A vast amount of that field-level detail is already available—we just have to tap into it and speak to the farmers to get it.
10:45Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
However, that leads to Scotland being in danger of losing the value of its natural capital to big organisations that do not live here. That might be a bigger question than the ones that you are here to talk about today, but the process is going through my mind as we speak.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
I want to go back to the point that Ross Lilley has just made about intensification, if that is okay. We are talking about a whole-farming approach—that is, one that goes across the industry—but it is a fact that, if you take just two farms, the climate and biodiversity challenges that each faces will be different. Indeed, there will be different climate and biodiversity challenges on just one farm alone, never mind the challenges facing a full-scale system.
I am going to talk predominantly about semi-upland, upland and hill farming. If we are saying that intensification is part of the issue with regard to biodiversity loss, I would just point out that you cannot get farming that is more about landscape than those kinds of farming. Why, therefore, are we seeing the same drop in numbers in upland farms as we are in the big, intensive arable farms?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
I am glad to hear you say that you do not want there to be no livestock in those areas—I should declare an interest as a hill sheep and cattle farmer and a shepherd for 30 years.
Has any consideration been given to predation of wading and ground-nesting birds? I have experience of what happens to lapwings, curlews, redshanks, golden plovers and so on when there is an influx of ravens. I used to have to mark where the nests were as I drove round my lambing fields but, by the time I had come out of all that, raven numbers had exploded and there was literally no point in doing that work, because there were no full nests. Have you considered what predation has done? I know that RSPB Scotland will deny that it happens but, anecdotally, I have witnessed the huge effect that it has had.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Future Agriculture Policy
Meeting date: 15 March 2023
Jim Fairlie
The farming community absolutely accepts that it has a massive role to play in this—nobody denies that. However, it seems to me that, given the scale of the challenges that we face, the things that the farming community will do within the confines of the funding that will be available to them will not be nearly enough. You talked about private equity coming into the landscape-style approach and the gains that we have to make. Is there a need to shift some of the focus away from the funding for agriculture and look at how we will do it on a much bigger scale?
