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 1359 contributions
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Clare Adamson
First, Ben Macpherson has a supplementary question.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Clare Adamson
We do not really want our discussion today to be about funding, but inevitably it comes up.
On the back of Mr Ruskell’s line of questioning, I will ask about the pivot by organisations that you talked about. We have heard lots of evidence that organisations felt that Covid reset their relationship with the funders for that time. They became trusted organisations when, all of a sudden, the restrictions on how the money could be used and which projects they could spend it on eased off, which gave the organisations an opportunity to use their own creativity to deliver, as you said, not only a cultural but a civic and wellbeing service to many communities.
09:15The organisations are saying that they would like to continue to feel like that, but they are back to the funding cycle and what they would call a tick-box exercise. Has Creative Scotland reflected on that in relation to how it is asking people to bid for funding now and how it is assessing projects? Is there any opportunity for multiyear funding for some of the organisations that are trusted partners?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Clare Adamson
Good morning, and welcome to the 19th meeting in 2023 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee.
Our first agenda item is a decision on whether to take business in private. Are members content to take agenda item 3 in private?
Members: indicated agreement.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Clare Adamson
Some members of the committee visited a couple of cultural settings in Edinburgh, one of which was Wester Hailes Arts for Leisure and Education. You say that you are not working on an asset register, but the WHALE arts centre is obviously very much at the heart of its community. We heard that it is working with partner organisations to open up empty shop units in the area.
How can we get a picture of what is happening across Scotland if all the different strands of culture that are happening in communities are not being fed in to local authorities or Creative Scotland? Does Creative Scotland have enough awareness of community initiatives like that one?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Clare Adamson
It is worth pointing out that, as convener, I was with the Presiding Officer at the Nordic Council this year, and the committee has tried to engage—to look north as well as to Europe—post-Brexit.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Clare Adamson
A number of members have supplementary questions, I hope. I am conscious that Mr Ruskell has not come in yet. Do you want to come in now, Mark, or are you asking about a different topic?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Clare Adamson
Our third agenda item is an evidence session on the supplementary legislative consent memorandum on the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. We are joined remotely by Angus Robertson, Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, and, from the Scottish Government, Elliot Robertson, head of the EU secretariat; Chris Nicholson, solicitor and head of the constitutional reform and external affairs branch; and Greig Walker, retained EU law management programme lead. I invite the cabinet secretary to make a brief opening statement.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Clare Adamson
I will turn briefly to the discourse on international offices and missions and will direct my question to Professor Jackson. We prepared a consensual report on the reach of international offices that was very positive. In its submission, the British Council said that it would welcome more offices being opened around the world. The political discourse in the chamber is very difficult—there have been questions about the costs of offices and whether they are a waste of money, and there have been suggestions that they are pretend embassies. Mr Cleverly has intervened by writing to Mr Robertson, and Mr Robertson has asked him to withdraw any indication that those offices are being misused or that the Scottish Government should be curtailed in its use of them. You mentioned that that would almost be unheard of in Canada. Are there other examples of sub-state Governments being at odds with their national Government? Is that not unusual?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Clare Adamson
Thank you, cabinet secretary.
The UK Government has stated that
“The UK Government and the devolved Governments agree that where common frameworks are operating they are the right mechanism for discussing REUL reform in the areas they cover”
and that when
“using the powers in the Bill, we will use common frameworks to engage with the devolved Governments on decision-making across the UK.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 March 2023; c 813.]
Do you agree with that statement, cabinet secretary?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Clare Adamson
The screen has frozen, so we will suspend the meeting briefly.
10:26 Meeting suspended.