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 772 contributions
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jenni Minto
What is the Scottish Government’s role in the annual review of frequency rates? How will the Scottish Parliament be able to scrutinise those decisions, which will impact on imports to Scotland?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jenni Minto
I thank the panel for coming along to the meeting. I represent Argyll and Bute, which, as far as I am aware, does not have any foot packs or hunts. Following on from Jim Fairlie’s questions, and comments from Mike Flynn and Kirsty Jenkins, I am interested to hear more about welfare and farmers needing to protect their livelihoods. What are your thoughts on the proposals in the bill that would reduce hunting with dogs to hunting with no more than two dogs and that would bring in a licensing scheme? In your answer, will you speak about why you oppose hunting with dogs—I think that you have already touched on that—and give your thoughts on the two-dog limit and how that might be interpreted by the farmers whom I have described?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Jenni Minto
The only fox on Islay is the dead one in the museum.
I am interested in hearing a bit more about the issue of licences, which has already been touched on. What are your thoughts on licences being granted for two years for environmental purposes? I ask Duncan Orr-Ewing to start.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Jenni Minto
I am interested in the point that dogs are intelligent animals. If you are following a trail and a fox shows up, they are intelligent enough to chase it. That is perhaps one of the loopholes that the legislation is seeking to close.
It interests me that trail hunting has been banned in Wales and on National Trust land. Do you have any comments on what impact that has had?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Jenni Minto
It is fair to say that some of my farming constituents have raised with me issues around the pressures of work in that regard.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Jenni Minto
You have mentioned your code of conduct a couple of times. I am interested in the difference between a code of conduct and a licence. What are the penalties under your code of conduct?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Jenni Minto
Do you want to respond, Mr Macleod?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Jenni Minto
I was struck by the comment in your submission that
“There are several methods to control foxes but none of them are effective in all circumstances. The need for different approaches to management is therefore vital.”
You touched on that point in your responses to some of Mercedes Villalba’s questions, but do you have anything to add in that respect?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Jenni Minto
I find it difficult to listen to “humane” and “snare” in the same sentence. Can you explain a bit more about that?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Jenni Minto
Thank you.