Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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Displaying 5744 contributions

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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Subordinate Legislation

Meeting date: 14 December 2022

Ariane Burgess

I understand that that is a bit of a deviation from European Union legislation. What is the thinking in the EU that means that it does not allow meat to be sold as defrosted? I want to get assurance that you have thought through all of that.

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 14 December 2022

Ariane Burgess

My amendments 192 and 193 are straightforward. They would simply add that, if a court convicts a person of a relevant offence and makes a deprivation order or a seizure order that affects the person’s dog or horse, any so-called “disposal” of that dog or horse

“must take into account the need to ensure”

its welfare.

I did not lodge amendments that would seek to add that requirement to the destruction option because sections 16 and 18 already state that a court cannot order the destruction of a dog or a horse

“unless it is satisfied, on evidence provided ... by a veterinary surgeon, that destruction would be in the interests of the”

animal.

I want to note on record that it is appalling that activities such as fox hunting may feasibly result in destruction being in the best interests of a dog or horse and that such activities are able to continue.

I thank the minister for offering to work with me at stage 3 to ensure that my amendments to the sections on deprivation and seizure orders would work alongside other such orders, so I will not move my amendments. I look forward to working with the minister at stage 3.

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 14 December 2022

Ariane Burgess

I support Colin Smyth’s amendments in this group, because it is prudent to require that reasonable steps be taken to ensure that dogs do not form a relay. As he has said, mounted hunts in England have been seen using several pairs of dogs one after the other to chase stags, and these amendments would help avoid similar practices being adopted here by making them an offence.

09:45

I do not support Rachael Hamilton’s amendments in the group. Amendment 244 defines the term “pack” in a way that excludes working gun dogs. Gun dogs are, simply, dogs that are trained to retrieve game. Apart from the problem of unambiguously defining what a working gun dog is—whether a dog is a “gun dog” and whether it was “working” at the time that it was hunting a wild mammal—that definition of “pack” would create yet another loophole, as those who are bent on hunting with packs of dogs would simply argue that they were using working gun dogs. To be frank, amendment 244 seems like an 11th-hour attempt to allow hunting with packs of dogs to continue, not in order to protect livestock or the environment but for sport and—

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 14 December 2022

Ariane Burgess

I have concluded my comments.

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 14 December 2022

Ariane Burgess

As we discussed last week, and previously during the taking of evidence, loopholes in the 2002 act were uncovered after the fact. I am concerned about allowing any space for any interpretation in any situation. People were very creative in interpreting the 2002 act, and I want to ensure that there are no loopholes in the bill. I believe that amendment 244 would potentially create a loophole.