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 5898 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
The committee has dealt with numerous transitional SSIs on import restrictions. Am I correct in thinking that that is all part of the Windsor framework—the new deal that was agreed at the end of last year—and that no new instruments should come in, because the regulations replace the interim measures?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Finally, is the committee content to delegate to me authority to sign off our report on the instrument?
Members indicated agreement.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Our third item of business is consideration of petition PE1758, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to end greyhound racing in Scotland.
Before we proceed, I make members and all those with an interest in the petition aware that the evidence session that was scheduled for next week with the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity has been rescheduled for 22 May at the minister’s request.
I welcome Daniel Alcorn and George Stark, who will give evidence as greyhound owners and trainers who are registered with the Greyhound Board of Great Britain. Thank you for joining us, gentlemen. The committee has a number of questions for you. As usual, I will kick off. Will you talk us through the scale and the nature of your involvement in greyhound racing? For example, how many dogs do you have, where do you train and kennel your dogs, and where and how often do you race them?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
On your business, do you train and kennel dogs for other people, or do you own all the dogs yourself?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Is that how things normally work? Daniel, you have your own dogs, which you told us about, but do other people come to you and ask you to kennel their dogs and train and race them on their behalf?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Do you think that there is any demand, need or support for another GBGB track in Scotland? Can you see that ever happening in the future?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Okay. Will you give us an idea of what your kennels are like? It is quite difficult to think how you keep 40 dogs. Can you explain to us how the kennels are set out physically and what sort of regulations you need to abide by to be able to race on GBGB tracks?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
When you go and race, how many dogs do you normally take, and how do you transport them?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
You said that you go above and beyond the GBGB’s requirements on animal welfare. The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission has suggested that Scotland should have a scheme that would be independent of the GBGB, and the Scottish Government has recently consulted on licensing. What are your views on having such an additional licensing scheme in Scotland, for tracks and, in your cases, for kennels?
09:45