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 5060 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
The level of detail in the budget lines has also been brought to the committee’s attention, in that there is not enough detail to allow for robust analysis. For example, RSPB Scotland stated that
“due to a lack of transparency it is difficult to judge what cuts to the Agriculture Transformation Fund and Agricultural Reform Programme will realistically mean, as there is simply not enough information on what exactly such budget lines are spent on. This is important information for external stakeholders who are looking for detail on what spending changes in these areas could mean for activities such as soil testing, slurry storage and carbon audits.”
You talked about carbon audits, cabinet secretary. Going beyond that, could we get a bit more detail? I think that we need level 4 data, and we need a bit more detail to be in the public domain in a user-friendly format.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
Yes, indeed. How do we un-bury that? How do we unearth it, bring it to the surface and ensure that that information is really clear for people?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
Good afternoon, minister. Thank you for joining us.
I want to clear something up on reporting. The policy note states that there will be a requirement for an annual implementation report on the old Scottish rural development programme schemes only in 2025 and that, thereafter, any reporting will be wrapped up in the rural support plan provisions that are set in the legislation.
My understanding is that we will not have a rural support plan until the autumn or winter of 2025, and that reporting on that will be required at the end of each five-year period. That means that we will not have that reporting until at least 2030. Is there no requirement for reporting on any scheme that will continue in the interim, such as LFASS or the agri-environment climate scheme? If so, why is that? Should there not be on-going reporting?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for that, but the reporting is connected to the rural support plan and we will not get that until the autumn or winter of 2025. The requirement is for reporting at the end of each five-year plan period. Does that not mean that we will have all the schemes but we will not see regular reporting?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
That is great, thanks.
The good food nation plan is probably a tiny little blip on one of the buried budget lines. Stakeholders have raised concerns about the slow pace and opaque nature of the development process for that plan, and I am hearing how frustrated they are. The consultation closed five months ago on 22 April, and the analysis has still not been published. Stakeholders feel that it is disappointing that the Government is taking more than three years to produce a plan, especially one that they feel is, unfortunately, unambitious. How can the Government ensure that there is sufficient budget allocation to take that work forward at a faster pace? Can you give us clarity on the timetable today?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for that.
On access to information on the marine directorate’s budget and research programmes, we heard from stakeholders that there is a lack of detail and transparency. The Government previously told the committee that work is under way to review what information the marine directorate will proactively publish, saying:
“As for the point about transparency as a directorate, we are looking at what information we can more proactively publish ahead of time, so that it is there and can be accessed readily by stakeholders. That piece of work is under way.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 11 September 2024; c 36.]
Will you commit to publishing more detailed annual information on marine directorate budget spending and research activity?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
I will go into a little more detail. One of the stakeholders at the round table was Open Seas. It made a written submission before the round table in which it raised a point about the marine fund’s payments of more than £500,000 to commercial subsidiaries of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation to collect fisheries observer data. It noted a concern about the use of public funding because the Fishermen’s Federation is not purely a research organisation, the data has not yet been published, and the data could be collected more easily by REM, which could potentially influence the federation’s support for that policy. Finally, it notes that there is little transparency around how that large sum of money is being spent.
Are you able to address those points—they are quite detailed—or provide more information on the detail of the project costs at some point?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
If you could update us on that, that would be great.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
We have been hearing from a number of stakeholders about their concerns with the forestry grant scheme. We heard the Woodland Trust outline that there must be sufficient funding for forestry, peatland restoration, the nature restoration fund, agricultural environment schemes and the relevant agencies, including those that focus on skills development. It is my understanding that the recent 41 per cent cut to the forestry grant scheme budget is predicted to cause a significant fall from previous years in the amount of new woodland that will be created in 2024-25, and that it will be one of the biggest gaps between target and delivery. That cut is also undermining sectoral confidence.
How does the Scottish Government propose to respond to the view that cutting planting funding will reduce the possibility of the Scottish Government meeting its own annual targets?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Ariane Burgess
Okay—thank you.