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: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Okay. Will you give us an idea of what your kennels are like? It is quite difficult to think how you keep 40 dogs. Can you explain to us how the kennels are set out physically and what sort of regulations you need to abide by to be able to race on GBGB tracks?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
When you go and race, how many dogs do you normally take, and how do you transport them?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
You said that you go above and beyond the GBGB’s requirements on animal welfare. The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission has suggested that Scotland should have a scheme that would be independent of the GBGB, and the Scottish Government has recently consulted on licensing. What are your views on having such an additional licensing scheme in Scotland, for tracks and, in your cases, for kennels?
09:45Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
I am going to move on to questions from Rhoda Grant on retirement—but not her retirement.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Alasdair Allan has some questions to wind up.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Good morning, and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2024 of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee. I ask everyone to switch their electronic devices to silent.
We begin with consideration of an affirmative Scottish statutory instrument. I welcome Lorna Slater, the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity, and her officials: John Speirs, senior policy adviser, and Emily Williams Boylston, a solicitor from the Scottish Government.
I invite the minister to make an opening statement.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
As no member wishes to debate the motion, is the committee content to recommend approval of the instrument?
Members indicated agreement.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
That completes our consideration of the instrument. I thank the minister and her officials for attending. I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow a changeover of witnesses.
09:18 Meeting suspended.Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
You did not have any involvement with Shawfield. Did you say that you have raced at the Newcastle and Sunderland tracks?