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
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 9 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
Thanks—that is good. Gareth?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 9 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
I have been reflecting on the challenges that your members have in relation to the loss of free movement of labour across the EU and the UK, and it would be good to get into a bit more detail about what would work for businesses. I am looking at the UK Government’s application page for the skilled worker visa, on which there are obviously a number of restrictions: your job has to be “eligible” for the visa in the first place; you must
“work for a UK employer that’s been approved by the Home Office;”
and the minimum salary has to be £38,700 per year, or higher, there is a higher going rate for the work that you will be doing.
Do those rules work for your businesses? If they do not, how would you want those rules to be modified in order for labour to meet the needs of businesses in the UK? Catherine, do you want to start?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 9 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
Please do.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 9 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
None of that is driving productivity in UK business, is it?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 9 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
It is not driving economic growth. It is just bureaucracy, is it not?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 9 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
Yes—it is a waste of time. Kate, do you want to come in?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
I declare an interest as a beekeeper, and I should also mention that I am the new species champion for the moss carder bee, which is one of Scotland’s rarest bee species.
Too often, conservation funding is very time limited. What long-term support is available for conservation programmes to secure the future of rare pollinator species such as the moss carder bee?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
Under the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, will large FLS land holdings be required to produce publicly accessible land management plans for consultation, thereby bringing much-needed scrutiny by communities and other stakeholders?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
Yes, thank you, convener. I certainly take on board a lot of the stakeholders’ comments about the need for clarity in the bill, but I am a little bit concerned about creating a definition of a circular economy at this point that is effectively fixed and immovable and cannot change over time. The sector is developing rapidly and there is a rapidly developing understanding of the circular economy, so I would appreciate some thoughts on that from the members who lodged the amendments when they are winding up.
Also, I think that it would be setting a precedent to have a purpose clause in the circular economy bill. I would be interested to know whether there are other areas of legislation where a purpose clause has been beneficial in focusing legislation on a particular area. I am not aware of that, but I will note with interest the minister’s comments and Sarah Boyack’s closing comments.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Mark Ruskell
If the minister feels that it is not appropriate to put such a provision in the bill, is there another way for the Scottish Government to work with industry to ensure that the aspiration to deal with critical minerals in a sustainable way can be reflected elsewhere in policy—in the energy strategy, for instance?