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: 3 November 2021
Jenni Minto
My question follows on from the questions from Ariane Burgess and Rachael Hamilton with regard to local authorities, health boards and other public organisations. Mr Burgess, as you mentioned, some local authorities already have plans in place, and one size does not fit all. Therefore, what flexibility does the bill give to public bodies to draft their own good food nation plans? I am very aware of consistency versus equality.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Jenni Minto
That is great. Thank you. I have read the bill and seen the terms “must”, “may” and “have regard to” every so often, so your answer is helpful.
How will the bill allow for the effectiveness of the public bodies’ plans to be overseen by the Scottish Government?
11:15Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 7 October 2021
Jenni Minto
Thank you for coming to see us today. I will go back to Donald Cameron’s first question. My friend is a retired GP, and they would have loved to have been able to prescribe hugging a tree or going to a cultural event. However, there is a requirement to change people’s perception of what they will get when they go to a GP. In some respects, perhaps the pandemic has opened up different doors. I had the privilege of attending an art show in Oban that resulted from work that people had been doing throughout the pandemic. There are ideas sprouting up throughout Scotland, and I hope that we, as elected people, and the Government can expand on them.
Cabinet secretary, I will go back to something that you said in your opening statement about the vibrancy of the screen industry in Scotland. There are studios in Leith and Glasgow, the BBC is across Scotland and there is Channel 4. I am interested to know how the budget will support skills in the industry and locations across Scotland, including our wonderful scenery?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 7 October 2021
Jenni Minto
I look forward to the sequel.
As you know, I represent Argyll and Bute. We need to think about getting some of the spend and the skills development outwith the central belt and to consider how colleges and universities could support that skills development. You are right to say that support is needed in every area, from make-up to set design to floor management and so on.
A lot of the evidence that we took stressed the importance of culture outwith the central belt, which Donald Cameron touched on. I was heartened to hear your comments on that. I want to underline how important small community groups and museums are for what they add to the community and for their role in bringing visitors to the area. That should not be forgotten in the Scottish Government’s budgeting process.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Jenni Minto
I was asking about the difference between the islands, which you have touched on. I was also asking about the difference between local authorities—the fact that there are island-only local authorities and blended local authorities—and about the age range of the people who were surveyed.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Jenni Minto
As we have such a huge panel, I will direct my questions specifically to Douglas Cowan and Ailsa Raeburn. Ailsa has just referenced the way in which particular communities work and other people have given different examples. That is one of the big positives of the size of the panel.
On sustainable economic development, I am interested to know how you tailor your support to different types of islands. We learned from the survey that not every island is the same. Jura has been referenced a couple of times. It has had a very strong community action plan and is now at a point where everyone is working, so it needs volunteers or some kind of support to move it to the next level. How do you tailor support for different islands and types of business? There are three sectors: the public, private and community sectors. How do you support the different types of businesses in those sectors?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Jenni Minto
I agree with you about the effort that communities put in. We have learned from the Covid pandemic that, if funds can be made available more quickly and easily, that gives us better value. Thank you for making that point.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Jenni Minto
I am interested to know more about the idea of 20-minute neighbourhoods in the Government’s plan. I think that Artemis Pana has some research on that, as might Derek Logie.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Jenni Minto
Exactly. Does Philip Raines want to come in?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Jenni Minto
I thank the witnesses for attending this morning. I am interested in how you have grouped the islands together. I live on Islay, one of the Argyll isles, and I know that even those isles have different subsets of islands, with islands off islands, islands linked by bridges and islands linked to the mainland by ferry. Have you been able to get different evidence or information from those groups?
I found the differences between, for example, mainland Orkney and its smaller islands quite stark, and I wonder whether we are missing a wee trick here, given that the Argyll isles are separate from the mainland. Do the differences between blended and island-only local authorities come out in the evidence?
Finally, with regard to selection of the panel, I note that the youngest involved were 18-year-olds. Given that, in Scotland, people can vote from the age of 16 and that young people have a lot of strong views about things, I am concerned that we are missing out on a huge area of evidence. Do you have any plans to expand the criteria for selection?
I will ask Ruth Wilson to start off and then move to Philip Raines. Perhaps Jonathan Hopkins can answer the question about the criteria for selecting people.