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: 8 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
As Jim Fairlie has touched on the area that I wanted to cover in this section, I will ask another question.
We have heard some stakeholders calling for fruit and veg to be subsidised by the Scottish or UK Government. Indeed, a paper from Warwick university found that doing so would cost taxpayers roughly £2.5 billion a year, compared with the £6 billion a year that is spent on treating illness related to poor diet. I am interested in hearing your views on that. Would supermarkets support the Government subsidy of fruit and veg?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
It is great to hear that both of you are giving farmers that premium price, but do you think that we could go further if there were regulation across the board that meant that everybody had to do it? By that, I mean regulation in general, leaving organics aside.
One thing that you have talked about this morning is the challenge around the competitive market margins. If there were regulation in certain situations that could help all of you take that step together, do you think that that would help us move things along? We have incredible climate targets, and agriculture plays a big role in reaching them.
09:30Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Does anybody else want to come in with thoughts on that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
A new environmental assurance scheme was recently proposed under the red tractor scheme, but farmers have raised concerns about the new standard incurring higher costs and supermarkets selling their products at a premium, but farmers not receiving a premium price. It is a similar situation with organics; such products have a market premium, but the Soil Association and others have proposed that more of that premium should find its way back to farmers. I understand that some supermarkets would pay farmers a higher price but they feel that they cannot do that while their competitors keep their prices down. Would your companies welcome regulation in this area, such that farmers who produce a premium product to a higher environmental and animal welfare standard would be guaranteed to receive a premium on the price from all the supermarket buyers?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2023 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I welcome Stephanie Callaghan to the committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent during the meeting.
The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take item 6 in private. Are members agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Mark Griffin has a supplementary question.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
When you talk about a cap, are you talking about the amount of money or the number of days? Last week, Paul Lawrence talked about a cap of seven days, which would involve paying the levy for the first seven days of accommodation, after which there would not be a charge.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Marc Crothall wants to come in.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thank you. Time is rapidly running out for us. The responses have been tremendous, but I ask members who still have questions to keep them brief and witnesses to keep responses to the point. That would be fantastic. Everything that you have contributed has been tremendous, but I need to make sure that we do not go wildly over time.
With that, I bring in Mark Griffin.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
The next item on the agenda is consideration of the Title Conditions (Scotland) Act 2003 (Conservation Bodies and Rural Housing Bodies) (Miscellaneous Amendment) Order 2023, which is a negative instrument. I should say that there is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendations on such instruments.
If members have no comments to make, does the committee agree that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument?
Members indicated agreement.