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 2099 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Again, we are confusing two different things. The vast majority of the funding that we receive for this portfolio, and which goes into payments, is ring fenced by the UK Government, which has given us no certainty as to what any future budget allocation beyond next year will be, so we have no idea what is coming. Without that clarity, it is not possible for me to determine exactly what funding there will be or to make commitments about multi-annual funds that, as yet, I do not have.
That is why we set out, as I have already explained, how we can expect the overall envelopes in the budget to be allocated. However, the quantum of that funding will very much depend on the UK Government, because that is where the lion鈥檚 share of my budget comes from. It all depends on how much I get from the UK Government.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
It is not possible for me to set that out at the moment. I cannot say that we would be looking to introduce other particular targets as part of the rural support plan, but we have statutory targets in relation to emissions reduction and the targets that are being looked at through the natural environment bill. Of course, we will have to consider those.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
The bill will, ultimately, give us the powers to do any of those things, although we have a cap in place at the moment. The powers to enable us to manage payments are critical. I have had discussions about redistributive payments. I recognise that, quite broadly, there is support for front loading. However, I am not positioned to set out today exactly what that would look like or what form it would take, because that will be part of the consideration of what things might look like in the future framework. There will also be discussions with the people who will be impacted by that to consider how we would best progress things.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Absolutely. As I said, we have a cap in place at the moment. We do not have any businesses that are in support at the overall cap, which is just over 拢500,000. After that, there is tapering, at the level of 5 per cent, that applies to businesses that are in receipt of funding of more than 拢130,000 and 85 businesses are impacted by that. That is where things stand at the moment.
10:15As we transition, we will set out more information. We would not change the cap or the taper or introduce front loading or redistribution without discussing that with the people who would be impacted. We would have those discussions before bringing forward such proposals.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Sorry. I used the figure of 3 hectares because that size was previously a determining factor for such support. It is not a case of my thinking being that someone who farms less land than that is a small producer and someone who farms more than that is a large producer. Obviously, it is not as simple as that, as you said.
This is about our enabling, through our measures, small producers and businesses to be supported, because we recognise how vital they are. I do not know whether John Kerr wants to come in with more information on that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
It is not possible for me to set out a timescale today. I hope that, in relation to the route map, I have been able to outline where we can expect to see changes and transition, but we still need to take forward that overall conversation.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Absolutely, and not least because we would have to undertake all the relevant impact assessments in relation to that as well. We would need to evaluate the system that has been in place to see whether it has worked and to make sure that we have the evidence base for any decisions on that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
We are considering the recommendations that have come from the DPLR Committee. I know that there were a few areas鈥攚ell, another area鈥攁s well as that. Of course, we will consider that, as we will consider this committee鈥檚 recommendations, too.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
What do I think about providing more of that information? It is always challenging because, as we have touched on today, in relation to some of that information, whatever we put in the bill will not be as flexible and adaptive. Throughout this period of transition, we are very much in a space where we need the ability to be flexible and adaptive. We started this discussion by talking about sustainable and regenerative agriculture. We need flexibility to look at that, because there is not one hard definition that we would be able to put in the bill. We need to be able to bring forward a basket of measures that can be used to support our producers, more than anything else, and to highlight what we mean, and we think that the code of practice is the best way to do that.
Again, I understand the criticisms that there can be, but we have tried to share our thinking as much as possible. The process is slower in its nature because co-development takes time. It takes more time for us to get it right and I appreciate that that can be frustrating for people, given the point that we are at with the bill and the need to know the detail of what future schemes will look like. That is why we have tried to articulate that as clearly as possible, at least when more information and detail becomes available. We are committed to working with people, because we want to make sure that, ultimately, we get the policies right.
In some of the other areas that you have talked about, such as emissions and biodiversity, we have statutory targets, as I have touched on, and more could well be coming down the line. That, of course, shows why we need to be flexible, so that we can take those things into consideration.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Mairi Gougeon
Set parliamentary procedures are obviously in place in relation to affirmative and negative instruments for the committee鈥檚 consideration.
As we have done in relation to some of the other developments that we have announced鈥攆or example, the whole-farm plan and the suckler beef scheme and attached conditions鈥攚e have set out in the route map when we will be making more information available and the process towards reaching that. We have set that out in the route map and in some of the information in relation to that that we have published already. This year, we have said that we will be setting out more information in relation to what will be considered in the enhanced tier of the framework; however, the secondary legislation would not be coming forward until 2025, by the time that it is enacted. I do not know whether Andrew Crawley wants to come in on that.