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 1469 contributions
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Clare Adamson
Lucy Casot wants to come in, but we will hear from Anne Lyden first.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Clare Adamson
I want to dig a bit deeper into what you have all referred to as the ecosystem in which you work. You have described some of that as competition, rather than describing working together and collaboration. I am thinking about the impact that the decisions that Creative Scotland makes on culture funding nationally have on the wider ecosystem. Thankfully, it did not happen, but there was a possibility that the Aye Write festival would not go ahead. Is there a boost from festivals to other cultural organisations? Do you see visitor numbers increase during festivals? Is there an on-going impact of, for example, a decision not to fund a festival that is perhaps not fully appreciated at the time?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Clare Adamson
Thank you. [Interruption.] Sorry—I am losing my voice. I will bring in Meghan Gallacher.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Clare Adamson
As everybody has finished their contributions, I thank committee members for their questions. Ms Casot, Ms Deighan, Ms Bell and Ms Lyden, thank you very much for your attendance. I close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 11:18.Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Clare Adamson
We will move to questions. Meghan Gallacher joins us online today, as you can see. I invite Mr Bibby to ask the first question.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Clare Adamson
Do you want to direct that question to a particular witness, Neil?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2024
Clare Adamson
I move on to Mr Stewart, who has been waiting patiently.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Clare Adamson
Yes, Mr Strang.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Clare Adamson
I am going to leave it to Mr Bibby to decide.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Clare Adamson
You mentioned our committee visit to Dublin, which we all found very informative. We were able to see how people there are playing to their strengths in terms of image and reputation and drawing on the energy and enthusiasm of their diaspora.
Do the revised national outcomes draw on the experiences of other small countries? I was very envious that Ireland was opening its—I think—131st mission. It has been concentrating very much on the African continent recently. What lessons can we learn from somewhere such as Ireland, albeit that it is an independent nation?