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 5030 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
The budget documents state that the marine directorate is delivering savings through recruitment controls, by maximising income streams and by achieving greater operational efficiencies. I am interested in what is meant by “maximising income streams” in this context.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Could you say a bit more about the recruitment controls and how the directorate achieves greater operational efficiencies?
11:00Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Just for a bit more information, can you tell us why you took the fund out of capital and put it into resource? I understand that the overall envelope has moved, but why is it better to have it as resource for what you are trying to achieve?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
I am concerned about the payments to fruit and vegetable producer organisations. As we have discussed, horticulture provides more food per hectare than any other forms of farming and crofting, and it is critical that we have a healthy horticultural sector if we are to achieve the Scottish Government’s agricultural vision. What are your plans for payments to fruit and vegetable producer organisations?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thank you very much.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
The final few questions will be asked by Miles Briggs.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
That is great. Obviously, as a committee, we are trying to understand the situation. We have had considerable discussion about the fact that there are various “versions of the reality”, as it was described by the director of finance for Argyll and Bute Council at last week’s committee meeting. It is difficult for the committee to scrutinise the Government’s budget with those different versions, and it is challenging for councils to make budget decisions. I am interested to understand why there is such disagreement over the budget figures each year, despite the commitment from COSLA and the Scottish Government to working together.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
That is great—thanks very much for that. I call Pam Gosal.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Stephanie Callaghan has a supplementary.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
I call Willie Coffey.