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 1370 contributions
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
Thank you for your opening remarks. This will be a round-table, free-flowing event. I know that members are already coming in, but I will go to questions from Mr Cameron first.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
David Watt wants to come back in, but I am conscious that some people have not contributed. Does anyone else want to come in before a final thought?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
I am looking to see whether anyone wants to come in on that question.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
That was helpful—thank you. We have exhausted questions, so I suspend the meeting briefly while we change over to our next panel.
09:45 Meeting suspended.Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
A warm welcome back to our second evidence session.
We are joined by Lori Anderson, director, Culture Counts; Julia Amour, director, Festivals Edinburgh; David Watt, chief executive, Culture & Business Scotland; Chris Breward, director, National Museums Scotland; Brenna Hobson, executive director, National Theatre of Scotland; and Francesca Hegyi, chief executive, Edinburgh International Festival. A warm welcome to you all.
Last year, our budget scrutiny coined the term “perfect storm” to describe what was facing the cultural sector. I first ask each of the witnesses to reflect on where they are now. I think that most of you saw the previous evidence session with Creative Scotland.
I will go round the room from left to right.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
We will probably come back to that. We will have the introductory comments first, and then we will come back to you later.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
We have not come to Lori Anderson yet. Lori, do you want to come in on this subject?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
As well as the question around funding, yes.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
I have Ms Forbes, Mr Stewart, Mr Ruskell and then Mr Brown. I am sorry—everybody wants in. I will call Kate Forbes first.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Clare Adamson
Those are good points. The culture in communities report was mentioned by a number of contributors. One of the committee’s recommendations in that report is about cultural representation at the community planning partnership level. The Government is yet to respond to that report, but that should happen soon.