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 521 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
Environmental standards on medicine use have been tightened since the publication of the REC Committee’s report. Have you seen a reduction in the testing of medical residues since that tightening took place?
10:15Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
Have you seen any impact from the tightening of the regulations on fish health, or has fish health remained the same since the regulations changed?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Rhoda Grant
I want to ask about new technologies such as enclosed cages, on-land cages, and the impact they may have. Will they have an impact on fish health? Could they mitigate some of the current problems? I am thinking of the lack of experimental cages and the like in Scotland.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Rhoda Grant
I want to ask about banned substances. Some organisations have suggested that there should be an independent regulatory body to look for such substances.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Rhoda Grant
One of the recommendations of the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission was that no further greyhound tracks be permitted in Scotland. What is your response to that?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Rhoda Grant
At the moment, you can do something on licensing? In what regard can you do something on licensing in relation to greyhound tracks?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Rhoda Grant
Okay, but if someone decided tomorrow to open a greyhound track, they would be able to do that, if their local authority gave them planning permission, because there is no licensing scheme.
10:00Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Rhoda Grant
What tools do you have to take action in that regard? We do not have licensing at the moment. Could planning permission be denied? How could you influence whether one opened?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Rhoda Grant
There is no drug testing at Thornton either, so we do not know if there is any substance misuse there.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 May 2024
Rhoda Grant
Okay. So, you have given it no thought.