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 2113 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
That is the overall quantum of funding, not the figures. As I have said, that aligns with what we have in direct payments at the moment, so the direct payments would include that. NFU Scotland advocated for 80 per cent of the overall funding, including the less favoured area support scheme, which would not be part of pillar 1 support. We are considering what that support will look like.
If you are pressing me for figures, I do not know what funding there will be from 2025.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
That is what I have tried to illustrate by talking about some of the definitions that we have put out there. You are absolutely right that the term can mean different things to different people. As I set out at the very start, it is a collection of different measures. I have also made the point that you just made, that every business is different and we need flexibility to be able to adapt to that.
The code is not something that we will conjure up ourselves, suddenly introduce and expect everyone to comply with. It is about working with people to develop a code of practice that works for everyone. It is not in our best interests to exclude, for example, the 18,000-odd businesses that are currently part of our agricultural payment system. We do not want to lock people out—it is a journey, and it is about taking people with us on that journey, which is why we have made the commitments that we have made. I want to be clear that it is certainly not the intention to lock people out.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
I am happy to follow up with the committee on the work that we have already published in that regard, if that would be helpful.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Ideally, we would like more funding than we have at the moment. NFU Scotland has called for £1 billion-worth of funding from the UK Government, and I support that call. I listened to the NFU’s conference down south recently, and it is asking for £4.5 billion rather than the £2.4 billion that it has been given by the UK Government.
I think that we are entitled to more support than we currently receive. Considering the potential for what we can do for climate and nature, we should receive more funding than we currently do. That funding has remained static over the past few years, so we hope for and would welcome any increase to that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Again, we are confusing two different things. The vast majority of the funding that we receive for this portfolio, and which goes into payments, is ring fenced by the UK Government, which has given us no certainty as to what any future budget allocation beyond next year will be, so we have no idea what is coming. Without that clarity, it is not possible for me to determine exactly what funding there will be or to make commitments about multi-annual funds that, as yet, I do not have.
That is why we set out, as I have already explained, how we can expect the overall envelopes in the budget to be allocated. However, the quantum of that funding will very much depend on the UK Government, because that is where the lion’s share of my budget comes from. It all depends on how much I get from the UK Government.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
It is not possible for me to set that out at the moment. I cannot say that we would be looking to introduce other particular targets as part of the rural support plan, but we have statutory targets in relation to emissions reduction and the targets that are being looked at through the natural environment bill. Of course, we will have to consider those.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
The bill will, ultimately, give us the powers to do any of those things, although we have a cap in place at the moment. The powers to enable us to manage payments are critical. I have had discussions about redistributive payments. I recognise that, quite broadly, there is support for front loading. However, I am not positioned to set out today exactly what that would look like or what form it would take, because that will be part of the consideration of what things might look like in the future framework. There will also be discussions with the people who will be impacted by that to consider how we would best progress things.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Absolutely. As I said, we have a cap in place at the moment. We do not have any businesses that are in support at the overall cap, which is just over £500,000. After that, there is tapering, at the level of 5 per cent, that applies to businesses that are in receipt of funding of more than £130,000 and 85 businesses are impacted by that. That is where things stand at the moment.
10:15As we transition, we will set out more information. We would not change the cap or the taper or introduce front loading or redistribution without discussing that with the people who would be impacted. We would have those discussions before bringing forward such proposals.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Sorry. I used the figure of 3 hectares because that size was previously a determining factor for such support. It is not a case of my thinking being that someone who farms less land than that is a small producer and someone who farms more than that is a large producer. Obviously, it is not as simple as that, as you said.
This is about our enabling, through our measures, small producers and businesses to be supported, because we recognise how vital they are. I do not know whether John Kerr wants to come in with more information on that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
It is not possible for me to set out a timescale today. I hope that, in relation to the route map, I have been able to outline where we can expect to see changes and transition, but we still need to take forward that overall conversation.