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
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
Jenni Minto
Thank you. How do you think you will be able to influence specific policies that Scotland’s differences require?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
Jenni Minto
Thank you. Alison, what is your view?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
Jenni Minto
In her evidence, Vhairi Tollan talked about the race to the bottom. Do you have any concerns that Scotland’s high-quality food and drink might get caught up in something similar?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
Jenni Minto
Thank you. Mr Thomson, how will your organisation have to shift in order for it to be able to contribute to policy that is being questioned from a UK-wide perspective, too?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
Jenni Minto
Ms Sargeant, thank you very much that response. I hope that my next question asks for a wee bit more on that aspect. You will have heard some of the evidence from the witnesses on the earlier panel about minimum unit pricing for alcohol. Alcohol Focus Scotland’s submission commented that the 2020 act might prevent the Scottish Government from fulfilling its legal obligation
“to put health before profit.”
Could you comment more on that?
You also touched on the environment. I would be interested to know your thoughts and comments with regard to lower regulatory standards to remain competitive within the terms that are set in the act.
10:30Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Jenni Minto
I am interested to hear SAWC’s views on the UK Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill and the provisions on livestock exports, the movement of domestic animals and the modernisations of zoo licensing that apply to Scotland.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Jenni Minto
It is about the movement of domestic animals.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Jenni Minto
That is a good suggestion. Thank you, Libby.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Jenni Minto
I want to go back to Dr Goddard’s point about trade-offs and incorporating local wisdom into research. I am also interested in hearing about your engagement with the Russel Griggs review of regulation, which was mentioned in response to Ariane Burgess’s questions.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Jenni Minto
Perhaps I can be slightly more specific. In research carried out by Thompson and others, there was evidence that seal blinds and false-bottomed nets might be impacting on fish health by reducing water flow. In other words, measures to protect fish from seals are not actually helping the welfare of the fish. That is what I was getting at. Does that make sense?