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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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 2076 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
That all needs to be taken into consideration, and there are a few important points to outline in that regard. Some of the funding that had been returned for capital went directly to support programmes such as the croft house grant scheme and the crofting agricultural grant scheme. We want to ensure that that money is used for the benefit of our farmers and crofters.
We have had the national test programme鈥攖he preparing for sustainable farming programme鈥攚hich I outlined. We have been supporting carbon audits to help businesses to get a better understanding of their baselines and performance in order to ensure that they achieve efficiencies from that and learn from the work that they have undertaken. It has been really helpful to utilise that work. Again, everything is subject to discussion and we do not know what future allocations will be. However, we will continue to engage with stakeholders in the development of any proposals for the use of that funding in the future.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
鈥攆rom the ring-fenced funding that is still to be returned? I know that that is hugely important for farmers and crofters. It is ring fenced and is being returned to the portfolio. I cannot tell you right now exactly what that will be spent on or how it will be utilised, because that is the subject of discussions with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, to work out the profiling of when that funding will be returned.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
I would have to follow that up with the committee, because that area falls to Siobhian Brown in the community safety aspect of her role. I would be happy to do so and to provide more information to the committee.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
On specific measures, as I said, we published some of the areas that we were considering and have set out examples of measures that could be implemented and could work鈥攚e are not covering all areas at the moment, but that is based on the information and science that we have. We are very much looking to get feedback on what should be included in tier 2. Further, earlier this year, we stated that we were looking to develop various pilot projects on the use of methane inhibitors; that is another example.
As I said, the information about those measures that we have published is not definitive and the plan is still a work in progress, so it is not possible for me to commit to what will be in it.
09:45Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Yes, and a lot of work can be done to improve that situation. Some of the issues that you outlined, such as planting on deep peat, have been dealt with through the updates to the UK forestry standard that I mentioned.
The species diversity percentage has increased, and the maximum percentage of a single species in a planting scheme has reduced from 75 per cent to 65 per cent. There are also updates in relation to planting on peat.
The industry had some concerns about some of what had been expressed in the report. Scottish Forestry was disappointed not to have been engaged in the report process, but engagement since then has been positive in producing discussions.
What is important in all of that is that we need a mix. Our native planting is hugely important, as is our productive forestry. As with everything, it is about ensuring that we get the balance right. However, our productive sector is critical for all the reasons that we have outlined today and because of the wider economic impact, too.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Yes鈥攖here would be more of that mix. As I said, that is part of the new UK forestry standard that will apply. The proportion of single species has gone down from 75 per cent to 65 per cent as part of that new standard.
Forestry now is very different from how it was in previous generations and decades. It is not planned, implemented or planted in the same way as it would have been generations ago. It is important to recognise the improvements that have been made through that process.
However, it is also like many other areas鈥攚e are constantly looking to improve. Some of the discussions that we had as part of the bill process were helpful in setting some of that out. Community engagement is also hugely important. We are looking at how we can improve that鈥攆or example, we are working with the guidance that has been provided by the Scottish Land Commission.
We are constantly striving to improve wider engagement, and we also want to ensure that we have productive forestry. We know that productive forestry has a positive impact on our emissions, as does our wider native planting and some of the newer science. Getting that mix right is critical.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Absolutely. You are right that there were some good points in the report; some of them have already been acted on or implemented through measures that I have outlined today. I am more than happy to pick that up with officials.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
You are absolutely right. There has been a lot of work on that, some of which I touched on in my previous response to Emma Harper, particularly when I spoke about community engagement.
Some projects do a really good job on wider engagement and involving people in the process, but there are others where that simply is not the case. We want to ensure that good engagement becomes standard in the applications that come to us. We constantly strive to improve those processes and to do exactly what you have set out, because forestry has multiple benefits if it is done in the right place and in the right way. It is critical to get that right.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
I do not know whether that is in reference to the additional quota, but I will hand over to Malcolm Pentland.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Mairi Gougeon
I will hand over to Iain Wallace, who might have more information, particularly with regard to marine protection vessels and that side of things.