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 5737 contributions
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
Without that protection, what could we see happening in the area?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
What would be the long-term impact of having no protection for the next two years? I know that that might be a hypothetical question, but I am concerned about the possibility of having no protection in place.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
Thank you. I have a few other questions.
The evidence that we received last week from Mike Heath on the need to allow the stocks to recover and to mitigate unintended bycatch and discards was compelling. What will the cabinet secretary do to address those issues through the future catching policy?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
It has been good to hear that there is great consideration of the collaboration that has been taking place and that will go forward, and a recognition that that needs to be underpinned in future activity.
Does the cabinet secretary consider that the RIFGs are suitably democratic? Why are community and environmental voices not present at their meetings? Where should those voices make their arguments, if not in the RIFGs?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
How would our fishing sector be impacted if the instrument were annulled?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
Thank you. The regional inshore fisheries groups are required to establish a management plan for the fisheries in their patch. Is the west coast and Clyde management plan sufficient to achieve a sustainable fishery? It seems not, given that the SSI that is being debated is not part of that plan. So, what else is needed?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
From the evidence that I have heard today, I think that protecting future cod fisheries is paramount, and I agree with the precautionary approach, so I will not support the motion to annul. However, going forward, we must get all the voices in the room, which you have indicated that you are planning to do. Assessing the closure after this period of time is important. Something that has come to me very strongly in the course of these evidence sessions and other ones that we have been taking on the marine space is that there is a lack of resource for an increasing amount of responsibility for Marine Scotland.
That needs to be reviewed, and we need to have the right resource for data gathering and monitoring so that we understand the spatial issues, the spawning issues and whatever other issues we need to understand, so that we have fisheries for the future. What we are talking about here and what we are trying to do for the long term is ensure that people who need to fish to make a living have fish in 10, 20 or 100 years from now. The precautionary approach is the right approach, because we are looking for a long-term impact.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
Thank you for that response and for your answer to Elena Whitham’s question, in which you painted a picture of everyone pulling together to try to find solutions. We are trying to find the chinks of light and rays of hope that have come out of the pandemic. People were pushed into a situation in which everyone had to play their part to find a solution that worked.
I thank all the witnesses for joining us this morning and for the evidence that they have given, which will be very useful in helping us to consider our next steps. I will suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
10:35 Meeting suspended.Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
I remind witnesses that if you want to come in and we have not directed a question to you, you should type R in the chat function.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Ariane Burgess
That was a good answer that really illuminated for the committee why the Government is not taking forward that provision.
Miles Briggs has some questions.