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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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.
Displaying 1111 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 5 October 2021
Karen Adam
No, I am not satisfied.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Karen Adam
I understand what you are saying about not labelling particular breeds and the onus being on the handler, but the situations that some dogs, particularly working dogs, find themselves in are not necessarily the same as those that domesticated, stay-at-home, companion pets might face. That should be taken into consideration in any future reviews, to ensure the protection and welfare of those working animals.
On the back of that, I know that animal welfare problems have arisen during the pandemic. Can you highlight any issues in that respect?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Karen Adam
I know that we are running out of time, so I will be as brief as I can be, although the answers will probably be quite long.
As a dog owner who has had large-breed dogs, I understand the responsibility that comes with pet ownership and the gravity of the duty of care that is involved. I am sure that the needs and requirements of my large-breed, mostly sofa-dwelling dog, for example, are different from the needs and requirements of dogs that go out and earn their treats for a living.
What would you like to be covered in the review of animal welfare legislation? Do you make a distinction between domesticated companion pets and working dogs?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2021
Karen Adam
The discussion has been fascinating. Governments around the world are experimenting with constructing their budget processes around wellbeing, and Scotland is learning from those experiments and looking at how they can help us to formulate budgetary processes, particularly in relation to children and child poverty. Do the witnesses feel that there is often a trap within a service mindset? Is the process easy enough to understand and influence for those who seek to influence it? Can you give us examples of where that has been done successfully in other countries?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2021
Karen Adam
It is nice to see all the witnesses today. I have a question on gendered budgeting. Providing gender equality in services is often seen as an additional cost, whether that be in social security or in health and women’s refuge services. Some services are not really built around the needs of women, and resources for gender equality are often seen as an extra. They are almost like an extension to policy, rather than part of the foundation on which the policy is built. We can see that clearly highlighted, as Engender alluded to earlier, in the disproportionate impact that the pandemic has had on women. That has been really clear to us over that time. Where do you see progress being made? What is still missing in gendered budgeting? I am sorry to ask another question, but what lessons can we learn from gendered budgeting when considering human rights budgeting?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Karen Adam
I have a little preamble before I ask my question. I think that Jim Fairlie was looking at my notes, because he stole my question, but I will go ahead anyway.
I refer to what Pete Ritchie discussed in answering Ariane Burgess’s questions. We have quite a task to include environmental sustainability alongside health and dietary guidelines. That involves not allowing the importation of food that is produced to environmental standards that are lower than those that we have in Scotland and not simply discarding the issue of environmental damage. We need to take the issues of poverty, diet, health and the environment seriously as a package deal.
We have a real problem with food insecurity and food poverty. The Food Foundation has estimated that those in the poorest decile of the population would have to spend 74 per cent of their disposable income to eat according to the Government guidelines for a healthy diet, whereas the figure for the richest decile is just 6 per cent. That is quite a dilemma.
Poverty does not harm only those who live in it; it harms the local economy and the environment overall. How can we square food growers and producers receiving a fair payment and supplying food to people at an affordable price?
I hear a lot about shortening the supply chain. Are there other packages of measures that we could pin down and home in on? Can you give your expertise on that?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Karen Adam
Thank you, convener. Sally Shortall spoke a lot about the role that women play in diversifying the sector. I visited a working farm that is diversifying into agritourism. The woman farmer highlighted her farming practices, which have been incredibly successful. The farm is environmentally aware, it reuses and recycles materials to make camping pods, for example, it educates people on the farm and it supports the local economy. It ticks so many boxes. It is an example of a woman’s pragmatic approach taking off when she was given the pathway and the support to do that. Is the gendered lens that is being used helping to open up the often untapped potential and entrepreneurship of women in the sector? How will the work that you have done enhance the whole sector, not just the position of women?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
Karen Adam
We have heard a lot about conversion therapy on a personal level, and “shame based” is a term that I have heard used to describe it. The fact that conversion therapy is often undertaken within the private sphere makes it difficult to see its full extent. Is there a danger that evidence could be hidden because of the privacy aspect or because of the definitions that were mentioned earlier? Is there anything more substantial that could impact on the evidence base?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
Karen Adam
Thank you. That is really helpful.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
Karen Adam
You have answered my second question, which was a follow-up question about the fact that a lot of aspects of the issue are hidden. Is there anything that we could do prior to legislating for a ban? You touched on a few points in that regard, but perhaps you would like to expand on what you said.