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: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
When would you prefer it to come forward?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
You do not need the powers to produce a draft rural support plan, do you?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
The result of the division is: For 2, Against 7, Abstentions 0.
Amendment 19 disagreed to.
Amendment 84 moved—[Finlay Carson].
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
The result of the division is: For 4, Against 5, Abstentions 0.
Amendment 84 disagreed to.
Amendment 20 moved—[Edward Mountain].
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
The question is, that amendment 20 be agreed to. Are we agreed?
Members: No.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
Amendment 85, in the name of Jim Fairlie, is grouped with amendments 85B, 85C, 86 and 87. I call Emma Harper to move amendment 85 and to speak to all amendments in the group.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
There is a long list of additional suggestions of things to which regard should be had, including the good food nation plans, crofting law reform, common grazings, the biodiversity strategy, the river basin management plans, the rural development plan, the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill and the proposed human rights bill. We have had a huge range of suggestions from stakeholders, and I presume that you will be open to suggestions about how section 3 could be amended to ensure that it covers their concerns.
I also want to touch on the importance of monitoring and evaluation of the rural support plan. We have heard that, in 10 years’ time, we could be asking ourselves whether the rural support plan delivered what it set out to do. Did it improve soil health, mitigate climate change, increase resilience and enable rural communities to thrive? Those are all suggestions that Professor Dave Reay made on what the rural support plan should do. How do we articulate that? How do we ensure that the bill provides for the monitoring and evaluation necessary to ensure that we are heading in the right direction and that we are not waiting until the end of the plan’s five-year period?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
I am sorry, but, before we move on, I am going to jump back to section 3, on matters to be considered in relation to the rural support plan and the Scottish ministers needing to “have regard to” certain matters. There are questions about whether we need that section at all. What is the purpose of it? On the reference to ministers needing to
“have regard to ... any other statutory duty”,
I presume that they would be required to have regard to those issues whether or not they were set out in the bill. You touched on having a list. Why is there a section 3 at all, given that the Government has to pay regard to statutory duties whether or not they are set out in the bill? Given the list of other considerations that you have said are really important, but which are not in section 3, why have we got a section 3 at all?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
Would that not be more clearly set out by having a more specific, tailored framework for what the rural support plan might look like? Rather than having to make assumptions about what is covered by the phrase
“ministers must have regard to”,
what if there was a section of the bill that made it clear what was to be included within the rural support plan? Would that not achieve that in a far more transparent way?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Finlay Carson
Amendment 17, in the name of Edward Mountain, has already been debated with amendments 61 and 122 to 124. I call Edward Mountain to move or not move amendment 17.