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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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
I understand that, but I am confused as to why we are talking at length about glue traps, and I am trying to get clarity. We are talking about them because the bill is bringing in provisions on glue traps, but it is about wildlife management, muirburn and specifically raptor control. I want to get clarity.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
On muirburn, is there anything else that you think needs to be in the bill, or are you content with it?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
When we were talking about wildfires earlier, I picked up that we need to follow the precautionary principle. The desire to move from a voluntary practice to a regulated and licensed practice is because we will potentially see more wildfires happening. Maybe that will be from natural causes, but my understanding from talking to people who work in that area is that wildfires are always at the hand of a human, whether it is in error or by intention.
I picked up from what you were saying that, as wildfires increase, we will need to increase the workforce and the equipment that is on hand to attend to those. Regulating muirburn is a way of moving towards a more precautionary approach so that we limit what might happen in other areas. We have already seen, with the fires in Cannich and Corrimony, that deploying people to attend to the fires is quite challenging.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
We need to move to an ecosystem approach and look at everything as a whole.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
I would be interested in hearing whether you feel that the recommendations on muirburn have been addressed in the bill and whether there is anything else that you would like to see in it. For example, in your review, you recommended increased training, which you have already addressed with my colleague Emma Harper. You also recommended that a fire danger rating system for Scotland should be introduced to better support decision making about where and when to burn, and that the Scottish Government should explore changes to the current rural payments and inspections division payments. It might not be appropriate to deal with those recommendations in the bill, but how do we ensure that they are dealt with? Is there anything else that you think should be addressed in the bill?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
I am not quite sure where to bring this in, but I want to clarify something. We are talking in detail about how and where traps are used, which is very helpful, so I thank Ian Andrew for that. I get the sense that we need to do a 360° look if we are bringing in this legislation. However, primarily the legislation is being introduced to address raptor persecution. In the policy memorandum, paragraph 13, under “Policy objectives”, says:
“The use of glue to trap birds is an offence”.
That is what we are trying to tackle here, is it not?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
We try to protect peat because we recognise that it is a super carbon sink. It is great that we are moving potentially to the licensing of it, but it seems odd that, on the one hand, we are funding the protection of it and, on the other hand, we are saying that it is okay to burn it, no matter the depth.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
Coming back to peat depth, my understanding is that that is an historical measurement that was used by the United Kingdom Government at the time when trying to identify energy sources. The measurement was about something different. We are looking at peat in relation to the damage that can be caused.
We have a peatland restoration initiative in Scotland in which we fund land managers to restore peat, so it seems to me that we are talking about two different things when we start to talk about depth. Peat is a continuous cover and, no matter its depth, we need to protect that in terms of our carbon emissions. What are your thoughts on that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
I want to pursue the question that I raised earlier. The policy memorandum mentions that the bill will bring in a ban on glue traps. It says that the bill
“is being introduced to address raptor persecution and ensure that the management of grouse moors and related activities are undertaken in an environmentally sustainable and welfare conscious manner.”
Paragraph 13 of the policy memorandum states that
“The use of glue to trap birds is an offence”.
Are glue traps used? Is that what we are trying to do here with the glue-trap ban?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ariane Burgess
Good morning. Thank you for being with us this morning; so much good information has already come from your experience. You are already beginning to touch on what I wanted to get into in the meeting, which is the bigger picture in relation to land management and grouse moors, identifying the fact that we could start to create a credible science base and understand what is really going on. I am interested in hearing what you think is the potential for sustainable grouse moor management contributing to tackling the climate and biodiversity crisis. Could the bill support that?
