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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
We have an acceptance across all the groups that a certain amount of wildlife control or predator control is a necessity for land managers, farmers and conservationists. We all accept that. If we are going to use dogs, all the evidence has shown us that the most effective way is to use an appropriate number of dogs, which is a full pack. Walked up, unmounted packs are a very effective way of getting foxes out of woodland and dense cover. To me, the number of guns seems to be the most important bit, as opposed to the number of dogs.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
It was just a flush to get a shot.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Are there any other ways in which the approach to determining the frequency of checks differs from that of the EU? For example, will the default frequency in GB continue to be 100 per cent unless a commodity qualifies for the lower frequency of checks?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Let me clarify, then. Are you saying that the only way that a farmer should get a licence is if they document the losses that they are incurring every morning at lambing time—so they would have to go out and record how many lambs are being killed for an ear or a tail or for feeding a den? Would that be the requirement that you would rather see for a farmer to be able to get a licence to deal with a fox?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Good morning, Lord Bonomy. Thank you for coming along. I really liked your description of urban foxes being the new Teddy boys—without being denigrating to Teddy boys. That was brilliant.
I am trying to piece together all the stuff that you have been talking about, but I have asked this question from day 1. Is the problem with the legislation not the number of dogs but the number of guns? At the start of your evidence, you asked how the hunters can maintain their sport and allow the fox to be chased while they stay within the law. I cannot understand how they can do that, because, from what I can see, the sport is that the fox gets flushed and then chased so that the riders can ride after it. Pest control is the fox being flushed and shot immediately on sight.
I can see a loophole in the law in that, if there is a 200m distance from the wood or whatever is being flushed, there may be a gun at one end and a gun at the other. The fox may go straight through the middle and everybody else will come in behind it. Surely the law should look at the immediate death of the fox on flushing, rather than the number of dogs that chase it.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
I would like to offer a brief clarification on the point that Ariane Burgess made about a shepherd monitoring a field after losing a lamb. As a former shepherd-farmer, I can say that we would call that passing trade. If you get one lamb lifted, you can live with that; two, and it starts to become a problem; three, and there is an issue.
On alternative forms of control, I keep coming back to the pre-emptive strike of catching the problem before it occurs. There is lamping, snaring, den poisoning and the use of terriers and other dogs. Do you agree that every tool in the box should be available to ensure that there is the most welfare-efficient management of problem animals?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
My question is this. Robbie Marsland mentioned that Lord Bonomy gave an estimate of 20 per cent of foxes being killed by the pack. Last week, we had before the committee Ian Duncan Millar, from the highland Perthshire foot hound pack. These guys are not going out hunting; they are trying to control a predator that is damaging to all sorts of wildlife and farm animals. Ian Duncan Millar estimates that up to 95 per cent of the foxes are driven out and shot. A concern that I have always had is that, if you are driving to standing guns, there are not enough guns. The most important thing, when a fox gets driven out, is that there are enough guns outside.
Surely the loophole in the law is that not enough care has been taken about how a fox is dispatched once it has been driven from cover. Surely having enough guns is far more effective than trying to use two dogs. Again, I know from experience that two dogs in a very wide area will not necessarily flush the fox. They will go round in circles, because the fox—which I have huge respect for—is a very clever animal. The point is to get the fox out of cover in order to shoot it, so the number of guns would surely be more important than the number of dogs.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
I will ask a question of Robbie Marsland directly, if that is okay. First, I want to put on record that I am glad that everybody in the room accepts that there is a need for land managers to be able to have a method of controlling wildlife. It is great that we have consensus on that.
I also put on record that I would in no way advocate that it is a good idea to allow packs of dogs to go chasing across the country to catch a fox and kill it. I am absolutely opposed to that—
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
The requirement in the EU was 200 consignments, but the SI is reducing it to 40 on the basis of the number of products that are coming in.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
We want to do this in the best way possible. A farmer will know that lambs are being killed and carried because that fox is feeding a den. Then we are into a whole different ball game of what we call ethical pest control or ethical wild animal control, because we would be taking a fox out while it is feeding cubs.
Surely, we can accept the fact that foxes will kill lambs; we know that they do it. I have had 30 years in sheep farming, and I can assure you that, every year, foxes will kill lambs. We cannot decide which fox in the countryside is coming in to kill lambs, so surely the principle has to be a general understanding that foxes will be a problem for farmers during lambing and that controlling their numbers during the winter would be far more sensible than waiting until the lambs are being killed.
