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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Having spent 30 years in sheep farming, I dispute that.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
I have a question about predator control, and I am looking for clarification from Kirsty Jenkins, Robbie Marsland and, potentially, Pete Goddard on a couple of points. Mike Flynn has already answered my question.
I will use the word “pest”, because if you are an arable farmer and you are getting 10 acres of arable barley eaten by rabbits, rabbits are a pest to you. Do you agree that the ability to farm in this country requires a degree of ethical control of wild animals? I do not need a huge explanation, just an answer. Do you agree with the principle that we should be able to control them?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Yes, but practically, how do you determine whether that fox is going to cause you problems? How do you do that?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
So, what would that evidence be?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
In that case, how can hunters maintain their sport while staying within the law?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
On the determination of whether there is a nuisance, if we accept that a fox will predate lambs and chicks during a particular season, would it not be more advantageous to deal with that before it becomes a problem rather than in the event of it becoming a problem?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Thank you. We are short of time, but I am glad that we agree on that point.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
If the GB approach is continuing to prescribe a minimum number of consignments that must have been imported into GB for a product to qualify for a reduced frequency of checks, what is that minimum number of consignments?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Okay. Thank you.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Okay. I have a quick question about licensing. We have had various conversations this morning about the necessity of control. I do not think that there is any dispute—we have all agreed—that foxes, in particular, can be a pest to lambs and various other things. You spoke about exceptions to the exception, but is there not an argument for people having a seasonal ability to control fox numbers, rather than their having to say, “I have a particular problem right now and I need a licence to deal with it”? Is there not an argument for seasonal control rather than the issuing of one-off licences?