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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
If you do not mind, Leia, I want to go back to what you said about flushing. In paragraph 21 of the policy memorandum, Lord Bonomy is quoted as saying:
“in general 20% or more of foxes disturbed by hunts are killed in this way by hounds”.
The policy memorandum also states that Lord Bonomy
“noted that there were legitimate grounds for suspicion that the present arrangements were providing cover for the unlawful use of dogs, contrary to the intention of the 2002 Act, and that such illegality raised concerns about the welfare of foxes and other wildlife.”
It is mentioned that a fox will sometimes be killed before it has been flushed from cover.
I want to get an understanding of what you mean. If the intention is to stop foxes being chased through open countryside, does that not defeat the point? If people are finding a loophole—if foxes are being killed while they are still in cover—there is very little that you can do about that.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
I promise you that it is very short.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Thank you, convener. I would like to come back in later, on the timing of licences.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
That is my point—they are not really breaking the law by deliberately allowing a fox to escape.
I will continue with the example of foxes, because that is where a lot of the concern lies. People are not breaking the law if a fox is killed before it escapes, because the purpose—as you have just said—is to prevent the hunt. I fully understand the problem that we have if a fox escapes and people shout, “Tally-ho! We’re off!” and they start chasing the fox around the countryside. Would that problem not be alleviated by having more guns and making sure that there is a minimum number of guns so that the fox never gets past the line of guns? Would that not cover that problem?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Okay. I am slightly confused, now. There is a genuine method of controlling a warren. If a warren is sitting beside an arable plantation, people will want to clear it out, to avoid crop damage. Quite often, a keeper will have, for example, a couple of lurchers or a terrier. Ferrets will go down and will flush the rabbit out. With the best will in the world, rabbits can come out three or four at a time, and the dogs will get them. No one is going to stand there with a gun and go bang, bang, bang, because that is just not feasible. Would that become illegal under the bill?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
So, they would either net or gun, rather than do it with dogs?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
If you are licensing a hunt to control a predator, surely part of the licence should set out that the hunt must have a minimum number of guns for a specific area. That could be worked out by practical land managers, and the loss of hounds or horses—or anything else—would be the penalty for the hunt failing to do that. I would have thought that, if the measures were that strict, hunts would comply with the law.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
Hugh, you clearly want to come in.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
I will press you on that point. Specifically, are we talking about guys who ferret rabbits and then allow lurchers to kill them? Is that what you are trying to stop?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Jim Fairlie
I think that I understand what the bill is trying to do there. There will be people who try to circumvent the law. If some of them say, “We’re going to this bit over here and we’ll have two dogs,” and the others say, “Well, we’ll go to that bit over there, and we’ll have two dogs,” they might say that they just happened to get together, but they would be deliberately trying to circumvent the law. Is that what the bill is trying to prevent from happening?