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: 30 September 2021
Jenni Minto
It has been an informative evidence session. I want to focus on young people. All your written submissions referred to harnessing the transformative power of education for climate stewardship. We have heard about the young people’s forest and about the COP youth conference. How are your organisations working with young people in Scotland and perhaps connecting their voices with the voices of young people in the global south?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
Jenni Minto
It is not so much a question; it is more of a comment. I was pleased to see Carolyn Sawers’s face light up when she talked about the young people’s forest. I have a connection, in that I am the champion for Celtic rainforests, so if possible I would like you to put that on your list of suggestions for the woodland.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
Jenni Minto
That was a powerful point about what we want to achieve with the funding.
I would like to return to the education side. I asked the previous panel about the transformative power of education and young people being involved in climate change and climate justice. What have you learned about that from the work that you have done, perhaps in Malawi, and through your connections with young people in Scotland? I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Jenni Minto
We heard Dr Pizzi’s views on the Scottish veterinary service, but how do the other panellists think the services in Scotland could be changed or improved? Dr Pizzi might want to add to his earlier comments.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Jenni Minto
I was interested in what you just said about the various challenges, and I would be interested to hear more about the work that you hope to do on climate emergency and the sustainability plan.
I was struck by something else in your evidence. It goes against what you have just said about different funding streams, but you give the example of the Creatives Rebuild New York initiative and the philanthropy that came into that. Is that something that you are looking to explore through creatives rebuild Scotland? As Ms Boyack said, the amount of economic benefit that the creative industries put into Scotland is large. I am interested to hear about those two slightly diverse things in relation to forward planning and finance.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Jenni Minto
That is right.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Jenni Minto
It goes slightly wider than that, convener. Before I start, however, I refer everyone to my entry in the register of members’ interests and to the fact that I am trustee of a small independent museum on Islay.
I want to widen out the conversation by considering the impact of the pandemic on the whole area of arts and culture, and how funding came to each of your organisations. What have you learned from that funding? The process to get funds out to people who needed it was far quicker in some respects.
I also want to look at this from the staycation perspective. I note the importance of not just investing in the central belt—more people are coming out to the wider parts of Scotland. From a culture perspective, how are your sectors supporting that shift of visitors and telling the story of the areas where people are visiting?
I do not know if you want to start with that, Ms Casot, or shall we give you a bit of a rest?
09:45Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Jenni Minto
I will ask a slightly different question. Your submission mentioned the importance of research and development spend to allow the creative industries to come up with ideas. John McVay of the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television mentioned that as well. What has been the success rate of that, if that is a fair question?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Jenni Minto
That was very helpful—thank you very much.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Jenni Minto
Yes—looking across the whole area, rather than farm by farm.