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: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
You mentioned the Scottish Government’s commitment to maintaining payments and some difficulties, shall we say, about the UK’s commitment at the other end of the balance sheet. I am sure that the committee will want to put this question to a UK minister at some stage, but has the UK Government explained its position on that to the Scottish Government? What have you said to the UK Government? What communication channels have you tried to set up with it to explain the Scottish Government’s position?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
You have mentioned the food and drink sector, but I would be interested to know what contact you have had from other sectors. The obvious ones are fishing and fish processing, but there is also the care sector and tourism. What approaches has the Government had from people in business about what they feel the impacts are?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
In relation to what comes under the budget headings, you have talked about backloading some of the things in the islands programme. Can you explain the reasons for that and what that means?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
In her questions, Rachael Hamilton attributed support for the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 to the NFUS. There is certainly support for access to markets in England, but more than one committee of the Parliament has had representations from the NFUS about its concerns about the 2020 act. For instance, Andrew McCornick, the former president of the NFUS, said:
“the UK Internal Market proposals put forward limit the devolved administrations’ ability to act if any standards were lowered and give the UK Government a final say in areas of devolved policy”.
The NFUS said that publicly, and we have had representations from the industry to more than one committee. Has the Government had representations about some of those concerns, too?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
Before I ask about issues relating to the funding of island areas in the budget, I will ask another question relating to islands and, in some ways, to crofting. You are very aware of the housing problems on the islands. We have spoken before about your not being the housing minister, but where, in the Government’s thinking, does the rural housing crisis come into your work?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
Before I ask specifically about the islands, I will think about the Highlands and Islands a little and ask about the Crofting Commission, if I may, convener.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
The budget for the Crofting Commission seems to be up. Will you say a bit more about the plans for how to use that budget in new ways this year, cabinet secretary? You will be more than aware of people’s frustrations regarding delays when dealing with the Crofting Commission, which, I hasten to add, is not a criticism of its staff.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
We have rightly talked for a while about the legislative and constitutional fallout from Brexit. I will ask a little about the economic consequences in rural Scotland, particularly the impact on population in rural areas. You will be relieved to know that I will not give a village-by-village account of the impact of Brexit on population in my constituency. Suffice it to say that there are fragile communities where it has made a difference. What evidence or information do you have about the impact on rural Scotland of the absence to some extent of people from eastern Europe?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Alasdair Allan
Earlier, you touched on the UK Government’s approach to finding responses—“solutions” is perhaps too strong a word—to some of these issues. For instance, approaches have been made for lorry drivers and care workers. Those proposals have been for relatively short-term interventions on visas, for example. Given the interconnected nature of communities and local economies in rural Scotland, do those short-term proposals work there, or do we need longer-term solutions?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 16 December 2021
Alasdair Allan
Thank you. I have a question for Dr Stein and Mr Johnson. You both talked about cultural diplomacy and soft power and, rightly, you have been careful not to draw too fine or too complete a distinction between art for art’s sake, as it were, and culture with diplomacy in mind. I think that it is right not to draw that distinction too sharply.
Could you say a bit more about the work that is being done to promote Scottish culture overseas? You specifically mentioned literature. I am curious to know what the aims are and whether they are specifically cultural.