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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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
Is it fairly well regulated? Does GBGB come in and check that you are abiding by its standards and conditions—that the kennels are kept in a certain way, the dogs are given enough exercise and whatever?
09:30Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
On the back of Alasdair Allan’s question, I note that, although the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission has highlighted “specific risks” of racing on independent tracks where there is no regulation, it has also said that
“the ... impact of racing on dogs racing on independent tracks is unknown.”
Is there any more risk to dogs running at an unlicensed track such as Thornton than there would be at a GBGB track?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Rachael Hamilton referred to the Greyhound Board of Great Britain and its plans to set up an assured breeders scheme. It sounds as though you are probably doing most of the things that an assured breeders scheme would do—you try to find out that the dogs are from a good home, and whatever. Would you welcome such a scheme? You guys are doing the right thing, but you have always said that there are some bad actors who might not be following the rules. Would you welcome an assured breeders scheme that would allow people to be part of the GBGB racing circuit, if you like?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
I will bring in Mark Ruskell to ask some questions.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
The consultation was undertaken by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the comment period was 10 weeks. Three responses were received. Was that three responses in total across the whole of the United Kingdom, two of which were Scottish, or were there three Scottish responses, two of which raised no concerns? I am a bit confused.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
As there are no further questions, we move on to formal consideration of the motion.
Motion moved,
That the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee recommends that the Plant Health (Import Inspection Fees) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2024 [draft] be approved.—[Lorna Slater]
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Did you previously race your dogs at Shawfield? When that track closed, did that have an impact on what you did? Did you start to travel more? What was the overall impact of the Shawfield track closing?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
Does your business make its earnings from your dogs winning races? You said that you kennel for other people. How do you make a living from your business?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
So, you would be quite happy if the Government were to consider licensing all aspects of greyhound racing in Scotland. You would consider that and accept it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Finlay Carson
We will move to questions about welfare at tracks, with a question from Elena Whitham.