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
I am going to move on to questions from Rhoda Grant on retirement—but not her retirement.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Alasdair Allan has some questions to wind up.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
The question is, that amendment 19 be agreed to. Are we agreed?
Members: No.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
Cabinet secretary, you must understand the committee’s concerns. You keep telling us that it is fine for the Government to have these powers. Our concern is that we will pass a bill that will give the Government broad powers but we have no indication of your intention when it comes to capping. We will be giving the Government those powers but we do not know what the limits will be, what criteria will be used or how extensively the powers will be used.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
Okay.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
It is absolutely worth putting on the record again that, when the DPLR Committee looked at the “Power to provide support”, its recommendation was:
“In light of the absence of detail, and the fact that this power is a Henry VIII power, the Committee recommends that this power should be subject to the affirmative procedure.”
It is important to put it on the record that negative procedures might not be adequate to allow this Parliament to scrutinise future legislation that is yet to be understood, or even yet to be developed.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
The question is, that amendment 85B be agreed to. Are we agreed?
Members: No.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
Yes.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
Given that the code of practice could potentially—you have not ruled it out—play a big part in cross-compliance, which would ultimately have an impact on basic payments, what scrutiny by Parliament should there be? Should Parliament have an overview or should there be a requirement to consult it on the code? The code could ultimately form the basis for cross-compliance.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
The question is, that amendment 173 be agreed to. Are we agreed?
Members: No.