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 831 contributions
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
It does—thank you. I was keen to bring that into the conversation early on. You make the important point that some of the issues are about income and money as much as they are about any other policy. I am keen to know our other witnesses’ views on what we understand a good food nation to look like and whether income is part of that.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
I have a brief question for Tilly Robinson-Miles. You mentioned the idea of a delay regarding certain rights around food, which I agree are important, but the bill that we are dealing with has a plan associated with it, and surely that plan would make rights to food tangible and real in the here and now. Perhaps the plan is where our focus should be. The bill that we are dealing with now provides for a plan, and we have not talked much about what might be in that. Surely we have something in the here and now to deal with, and we are not really dealing with a delay.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
I am interested in what Polly Jones said about the causes of hunger and the connection with incomes. There is obviously a great deal that the bill can do and it will be interesting to see what is in the plan. Can you say any more, given your experience of running food banks, about the impact on nutrition and on incomes of measures such as universal credit?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
My only other question is for Claire White. Like Claire, I live on an island, and I am very interested in what she had to say about supply chains and the market for food locally.
What more do you think can be done—I do not say to reverse the trend—to promote places in islands where food that is produced locally can reach an even wider market locally? In many places, as you have touched on, as in the rest of Scotland, supermarkets have a very large market share of the sale of food, and whether supermarkets choose to stock much local produce at all is variable. What options does Scotland have to ensure that island communities such as yours see more locally produced food on island shelves?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
I suppose that it is just a comment. Given what we have just heard today about the ingenuity that has been used and is used by many families who are struggling to pay for food, I wonder whether Ms Hamilton would reconsider the phrase that she used about families who are hungry possibly being “less ... educated” in how to cook.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
Welcome back to the committee, cabinet secretary. In the past, the committee has taken an interest in and has spoken to you about the issue of mainstreaming cultural spend. Will you say more about what you have done to interest other parts of Government and the public sector in the importance of culture? For example, I am thinking about the national health service and town planning. Have you been able to advance the argument that, in the longer term, spending on culture saves in many other areas?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
You mentioned that one of the challenges that you face has been to establish the UK Government’s intentions on consequentials in the area. Will you say a bit more about that and how it is affecting what you are doing?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
You mentioned the challenges that the culture sector has faced throughout Covid. Have those challenges changed? At an earlier stage, the committee would have been hearing about how to shift much of the culture sector online and do things differently. Now, perhaps, the demand is about how to move things back offline and get people back to events and live performances. Does the budget have to be agile enough to cope with the situation and, if so, how does it manage the changing priorities around culture as we come through Covid?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
My question is perhaps for Robin Gourlay and Mary Brennan.
We have touched on international examples and you have said that there are some success stories in Scotland. There are examples of countries that have managed to turn around their food culture. In Scotland, people raise lots of questions about the need to teach people to cook—I do not exempt myself from that criticism. There are big questions about whether a culture is developing that dissuades children and young people from going outside, seeing the environment around them and exercising, or certainly doing so unsupervised. Are there countries that can teach us about such things?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
We have talked a bit about the kind of things that can be done to make sure that our aspirations in the area become a reality. As the bill develops, the monitoring of policies takes on an importance. Given that what is in the plan is as important as what is in the bill, do we need to see what is in the plan? Do we need systems of monitoring that are attuned to what is in the plan and to learn from what is in it? That question is perhaps for Mr Gourlay.
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