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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 2161 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
It is almost how certain wind farm operators work—the money goes directly to the community for the community to be able to work. Could the same be considered for fish farm sites?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
Can I have one more question, convener?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
In the Maggie Gill report, the second recommendation for the Scottish Government is:
“Aquaculture (as for land-based food production) is an industry that has environmental impacts and is susceptible to climate change. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) or another part of the SG should consider commissioning independent, horizon scanning syntheses of the international literature to give advanced warning of where regulations may need to change.â€
You just started to talk about what the sea bed compliance has been. What general improvements have you seen? There was something about the non-compliance with aquaculture regulations and the difference that the 2019 revised aquaculture regulatory framework made.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
Okay. So, where my head is on this is that, if communities that are affected by fish farms do not have a vested interest in them, they will not have the same buy-in. Is there a way of strengthening the local community’s ability to have a vested interest?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
It is effectively future proofing it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
I want to get some perspective here. The survival rate for wild Atlantic salmon is somewhere between 1 and 3 per cent. For farmed salmon, it is about 85 per cent. There will be extenuating factors and extraordinary occurrences that the cabinet secretary mentioned, such as jellyfish and algal bloom.
Edward Mountain has just quoted numbers of dead fish. My question is on that issue and is quite an odd one. What do the farms do with the dead fish?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
As we go along, I want to learn more about the benefit that will come to the actual community who live there and who are most affected. Thank you.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
I accept that mortality levels should be as low as possible. Although I hate to sound callous to people who view fish as sentient, surely, as part of the process, there is an opportunity to turn the by-product into fish fertiliser and other products. I see Edward Mountain shaking his head in disgust. We do not want mortality, but mortality is going to happen, because immortality is not an option. If you are going to have farmed animals, fish and livestock will die—that is just part of the process. That can be used in another way. Is that already happening in the industry?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
I reiterate that aquaculture is a massive part of the economy and it is vital that we allow it to continue. My understanding—to be honest, it is quite limited—is that disparate bodies have different views on whether it is a good thing. It is important that we understand that it is really important to our economy and our rural jobs. We have to nurture it, but we must find the right way to do that.
I go back to what the convener said: if we are sitting in third place, we want to be first. The question is how we can get to first place by increasing the volume that we can produce in this country. That is probably more of a comment than a question.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Jim Fairlie
I am not quite sure where the politics would come in. The country is generally agreed that we are TB free, though there may be issues with certain reactors. As long as we just want clarification of the purpose behind the order and to know that everything has been looked at, I am not sure that there is anything political to worry about.