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 2726 contributions
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
Thanks very much for those introductions and, indeed, stories. You are all good storytellers, and you have given us some great examples.
I want to drill down a bit and look at what actually works with regard to funding, partnerships and so on. It sounds as if a diversity of connections is being made between your organisations and, say, statutory agencies, councils and other organisations in your area. Can you drill down into that and be quite succinct about what actually works? In previous evidence sessions, the committee has heard, for example, about the NHS in England employing people to go round and find social prescribing opportunities, and we have also heard about some of the partnerships that have emerged from community planning partnerships.
I am interested, though, in hearing your perspectives on the essence of this. How do you develop the funding partnerships that allow you to undertake more longer-term work in your projects? That question is open to whoever wants to come in.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
I have a lot of questions about how to sustain what has been created and how to develop the partnerships that have been established by the various projects and make them sustainable for the long term. It seems as though the Culture Collective has seeded all that work in the communities, but how do you then build the network for the long term and get partners in that network to feed into it, recognise its long-term value and move beyond that period of great creativity and innovation that has lasted for the six months or two years? Ultimately, the need is there, the benefit is there and the commitment to communities is there, and expectations will have also been raised. Where do you go next?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
I am happy to allow the discussion to move on.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
I am interested to know to what extent, over the two-year process, there has been a different conversation in local communities about funding? Have discussions been galvanised about a transient visitor levy, 1 per cent for culture or funding from other sources? Is that embedding itself into future partnerships and future funding sources, or is it still embryonic? The momentum that you built up has to go somewhere. If, fundamentally, it is about funding and commitment over time, what are the areas that the community and peer-to-peer networks are trying to push forward? Are they trying to move the conversation on at local level about how things will be supported?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
I welcome the record level of investment that we are seeing from the Scottish Government. It is partly a result of the Bute house agreement and Greens being in government and of successive budget deals in Parliament.
Does the minister agree that delivering the capital infrastructure that keeps the cyclists, the wheelers and the walkers separate from motor vehicles is the right priority for the Government, and that to drive up rates of active travel, it is a case of build it and they will come?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
GBGB also said last week that a phase out of or a stark ban on greyhound racing would just drive it underground. Is it possible to drive greyhound racing underground? I am trying to imagine how that would work. Maybe it is—I do not know. Maybe there are examples of that happening elsewhere.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
Does Sam Gaines want to come in on that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
Coming back to the point that you have made several times about the inherent risk of greyhounds racing at speed around an oval track, I am interested in whether it is possible to reform that. Last week, I put it to GBGB that it could consider racing greyhounds on a straight track. Is that something that the industry has meaningfully considered? Is there a way of removing that inherent risk in greyhound racing, or is there something about the nature of the sport—how it is televised, how it has grown up or how tracks are constructed—that makes that difficult? I am just trying to understand, because it seems to me that, if you remove that inherent risk, you perhaps remove a central part of the objection to greyhound racing.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 27 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
Would you make a distinction between a democratisation of culture and a cultural democracy? Does what you describe—the work that you have done with the Culture Collective and the studies that you have done in Culter—really focus more on what a cultural democracy looks like locally rather than just on widening participation and access more generally?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 27 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
Those were interesting points about how the world might be changing a little after Covid. Are there trends in terms of availability of time; is time becoming harder or easier to find? There is growing interest in the concept of a four-day week, which is being implemented in a minority of situations. What are your thoughts on that? In particular, how does that play out in relation to time not just to participate, but to organise the voluntary effort that is needed to, for example, run a third-sector group? How does that vary in communities that might be time rich or time poor? Reflections on that would be useful.