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 2616 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
The second part of my question is about what the specific areas of uncertainty are. Could you run through those?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Can I just get that clear? You are saying that, in effect, the common frameworks do not exist. What is the forum, then, for a discussion on all the areas of uncertainty, such as the level of the deposit in England’s scheme, and labelling? What is the forum for that uncertainty to be discussed and resolved?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Right. Is there a way forward? What if Minister Pow turned round and said, “We’ll discuss all the areas of uncertainty and grant the Scottish DRS the ability to set the framework for the rest of the UK”? Or what if we just had a set of rules that could exist for a period of time?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Building on that, I am interested in where creative community hubs sit within your strategies and organisation and how you will consider funding them through the new funding model that you are developing.
Last week, we were quite struck by some of the work that has been happening across Edinburgh to, in effect, reset the relationship between creative community hubs and agencies. In particular, there is the report “Working Better Together”. There is perhaps a sense that many community hubs feel that cultural opportunities are being offered to them but they are not being developed from the ground up—that a community development approach is not happening right now.
There has been other evidence—for example, from the University of Stirling, looking at Creative Stirling—about how creative hubs pivoted during Covid to take a much more inclusive and community development approach. Does that fit the funds that you have, or does it start to stray into other, siloed, boxes such as regeneration? How are you incorporating something that is much more holistic and about place making into your central funding, which is about culture but is also about much more than that?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Do you think that there might be a tension when large cultural organisations and festivals, such as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, want to invest in communities but their investment can feel very top-down? For example, they might say, “Here are 60 tickets for something that we are producing.” One view that was quoted from the Edinburgh creative hubs is:
“If you want the margins to engage, then invest in the margins. It’s quite straightforward.”
Is the balance right? Is culture something that is being offered to people—I would not quite say “being done to people”—or can it emerge from communities? Is that partnership right at the moment? The view that we have heard is that sometimes it is not, and culture is seen as a type of philanthropy—“Would you like to come and see our show?” instead of, “What are you creating in your community and how can we invest in and develop that?”
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
If you recognise that, what role can Creative Scotland play in helping to reset, or at least question, the relationship in that partnership and whether it is working in certain areas?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Are there barriers in terms of the scale and capacity of organisations, particularly those in rural areas that might be suited to applying to a small grant scheme but less suited to applying for funding for a bigger project? I am thinking particularly about core funding. It is easy for organisations to apply for funding for a small project but, if the core funding is not there to invest in their buildings and assets or management or cleaners or paying for heating and all the rest of it, they are never going to reach the point at which they can come to Creative Scotland with a bigger, more transformative application to serve their communities.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Do you recognise that the core funding issue is a big issue and that it is not just about rural arts community hubs? It is also about urban organisations. If the money is not there to employ a manager or core staff, everybody will be running around writing short-term applications for project funding without anybody to run the show.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Thank you.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Today, a group of nine animal welfare organisations have teamed up to call for a phase-out of greyhound racing in Scotland. The industry is on its last legs, with just one racetrack left in Scotland. No dog deserves to be forced into a gambling-led industry with an unacceptable risk of injury and death. Does the First Minister agree that it is now time that Scotland phased out greyhound racing once and for all?