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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
You can go to Rachael first, convener, because I am keen to hear from other people.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
We have just touched on exactly the questions that I was going to ask. The legitimacy of what BASC, the SGA and so on do is not in question here; the issue is the people who come behind them and see a potential loophole in the proposed legislation as it stands. Robbie Marsland is absolutely correct to say that there never used to be such a thing as flushing to dogs or guns in fox hunting, but now there is. There is a potential loophole in that respect.
My question is for the guys on the panel who are involved in shooting. If the Government’s position remains and the limit is two dogs, will you still be able to rough shoot?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
That kind of gets to the point of it, does it not? Rough shooting would still be allowed if more than two dogs were used, as long as those dogs did not form a pack and each person had no more than two dogs under their control. How would that sit with you, Ross?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
However, it is not the average member of the public that you would have to convince, but an officer of the law, who would be there and would have a specific understanding of what you were trying to do.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
But if you were subject to a vexatious allegation, and Billy Telford and his crew arrived and ascertained very quickly that you had not done anything illegal, what would be the problem?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
I fully accept that, but we need to be clear that the bill team stated last week that the bill is not about curtailing people’s ability to hunt—people should still be allowed to hunt.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
I would rather hear what other folk have to say, convener.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
I would have thought that laws were always made on the basis of those who would abuse them rather than those who would keep them.
I also ask the same question of the SGA and Jake Swindells. Would you be able to have a rough shoot with a two-dog limit?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
Under its definition of rough shooting, the BASC says:
“Virtually all the quarry species listed can be walked-up (i.e. where the shooters flush out the quarry as they walk through the cover)”.
As Police Scotland will be responsible for enforcing the legislation, would you have a concern about your ability to interpret the following scenario? Five guys are out on a shoot, and each has a dog or a couple of dogs. They are well spaced out as they walk; in fact, they have enough space between them not to form a pack but it still allows them to enjoy the rough shoot. If somebody came to you and said, “These people were walking through a wood; they had a certain number of dogs; and a rabbit or a hare was shot,” would Police Scotland be able to interpret that scenario?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 17 November 2022
Jim Fairlie
If we have a greater proportion of older workers leaving the labour market, will that put much more pressure on the younger age group to be able to manage the pension fund?
