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 498 contributions
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
Another thing occurred to me after Jenni Minto’s question about culture. Most of us do not know about Ukrainian heritage, so would it be possible for you to send us a briefing on the key dates in the year so that we could put them on our website or have them in our minutes?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
One thing that strikes me is that the welcoming at the start of the process is very good, but the following-up with people and making sure that information is available afterwards is an issue, and your suggestions on that are helpful.
The other observation that I have is that we first had these discussions early on in Putin’s invasion, and people were thinking in the short term. We now have the experience of Ukrainians who have been in Scotland for several months, and we need to raise that longer-term support and connectivity with colleagues.
Ukrainians have mentioned to me that when they arrived they were so grateful that they had escaped and had another start, but they did not want to mention health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder or other long-term conditions on day 1. We need to make sure that we give them relevant information. I know that some of that information is available in Ukrainian from the health service, but perhaps we need to work out how to get it to people directly, so that they can access that advice and make use of it.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
We can feed that in as well. Thank you.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
In Edinburgh, we have a group called the Welcoming, whose members reach out to people who have come to Edinburgh—because it is a capital city, we tend to get a lot of folk. The group has put on lots of classes, so maybe there is experience there that could be shared. Could we do more to mobilise our local community support? I know that that has been successful when it has happened in Edinburgh. Could we as MSPs do more to encourage that work to happen with our councils?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
I mean both the local community and the Ukrainian community.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
Are there any practical ways that we could do that across the Council of Europe or by talking to different countries in the network?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
Cabinet secretary, you mentioned the issue of where the money will come from. I note that solutions have been suggested, such as the tourism visitor levy; a percentage for the arts scheme, which your manifesto said could generate £150 million a year; and social prescribing. However, as with multiyear funding, those are not here now; potentially, they are years away. Does that not take us back to the perfect storm and the need to save organisations now? That came across incredibly strongly from Creative Scotland last week, and it has also come across from many organisations that have lobbied us individually.
I know that you will not be able to comment on the Filmhouse. However, to look at the issue, there were enough investor organisations to keep the Filmhouse going, yet it went straight into administration, with no public discourse and with nobody knowing about it. There is something about keeping our organisations open—keeping the “doors open”, as Sir John Leighton said to us in September. How do we support Creative Scotland now, rather than cutting it? There might be cross-Government support, such as business support and economic advice to organisations now.
Creative Scotland made clear to us that organisations will potentially go under without support now. Therefore, it is about two things: not only support now, in terms of funding through Creative Scotland, but advice and support to avoid that culture of doom that was talked about last week. How do we keep organisations going when there are potentially donors, funders and local organisations that, when faced with a crisis, would come together?
I know that you cannot talk about the Filmhouse but, with two weeks to go, there are people out there who have resources and would be up for saving that organisation. That issue is not just local but international, because of the Edinburgh international film festival. What do we do now?
10:15Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
I have a brief follow-up question, cabinet secretary. It was good to hear that you talked to local government representatives. Every time that I do that, they just remind me of the cuts that they have experienced over the past decade and of the fact that culture has taken the biggest cut. It would be very welcome if new items could be put on the agenda to support culture, and to support people in the cultural sector, and—reflecting on your last comments—artists in particular, to work in schools.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
It is excellent to have you with us today. I have a follow-up question. In June last year, we had a very good visit to Brussels. We need to follow up, rebuild and reset our relationships. You have your top priorities, and I wonder about the other softer power issues, such as culture, education and tourism—you also talked about trade. Are there ways that we can re-establish connections or not lose those connections with the range of members that you have in the Council of the European Union?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Sarah Boyack
Following on from that, it is about what practical support could be available now. There is support for organisations through Creative Scotland. It is clear that it is difficult for organisations that are using reserves, because they have those reserves for very good reasons—they could be about the organisation’s legal obligations, for example. The issue is about support for them now. Going back to the cuts to Creative Scotland, it is about that message of health and wellbeing, jobs, economy and tourism; it is about not only the cultural aspect but the wider impact on the economy.
I will broaden that out to look at our big five cultural organisations: Scottish Ballet, Scottish Opera, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the National Theatre of Scotland. They have had standstill budgets since 2016-17. How do we support our organisations now? Part of that is through funding, but part of it is through challenging Covid hesitancy, which Donald Smith spoke about last week. What is the Scottish Government doing to get people back into culture? We have a cost of living crisis, but what more could the Scottish Government do now to get people back into culture and to support those organisations now?