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 5898 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Finlay Carson
Right. You could use the exemptions in situations in which there is a failure of the monitoring system that is outwith the skipper’s control, and that would allow you to protect the business. For example, if that happened to someone pelagic fishing for mackerel, and they do that for only two months of the year, you could apply such an exemption to ensure that that business could continue.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Finlay Carson
I call Emma Harper.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Finlay Carson
Is the committee content to recommend approval of the instrument?
Members: No.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Finlay Carson
The committee is not agreed. There will be a division.
For
Allan, Alasdair (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Burgess, Ariane (Highlands and Islands) (Green)
Forbes, Kate (Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch) (SNP)
Grant, Rhoda (Highlands and Islands) (Lab)
Harper, Emma (South Scotland) (SNP)
Whitham, Elena (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) (SNP)
Wishart, Beatrice (Shetland Islands) (LD)
Abstentions
Carson, Finlay (Galloway and West Dumfries) (Con)
Hamilton, Rachael (Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire) (Con)
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Finlay Carson
Thank you. That completes our consideration of the instrument. I thank you, cabinet secretary, and your officials for attending the meeting.
We will suspend the meeting for a five-minute comfort break.
10:29 Meeting suspended.Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 1 May 2024
Finlay Carson
Our next item of business is consideration of two negative SSIs. Do members wish to make any comments on the instruments?
As there are no comments, can I presume that everyone is content to note the instruments?
Members indicated agreement.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 April 2024
Finlay Carson
The federation represents some scallop fishers. Currently, some of them will voluntarily have REM on their vessels. What was the reason for their voluntarily doing that? Have they seen any benefits, or what issues have they seen?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 April 2024
Finlay Carson
I am aware that Rachael Hamilton and I interrupted Emma Harper’s question, so I ask Joe Whitelegg whether the Isle of Man marine compliance has any issues with the technical specification. Have you any reason to believe that the technical spec could give rise to issues?
09:30Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 April 2024
Finlay Carson
Ian Gatt, would you like to come in on the same point?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 April 2024
Finlay Carson
Does the instrument on which we will have to make a decision allow for that pragmatism?