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: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
How is that negotiation going to go? Are you going to go down to Westminster every year—or every five years, if we get multi-year payments—to explain the Scottish Government priorities to spend that money and ask for £700 million in the next year? I do not understand how we can work that out.
It is a bit like the block grant. Westminster decides how much to spend on the national health service, a Barnett formula consequential then comes into the Scottish block grant, and the Scottish Government has to decide whether to spend that on the NHS or on something else. What is the formula? Given that agricultural policy is devolved, how is it going to work when Westminster delivers a budget that we want to have ring fenced for agriculture?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
You will be pleased to hear that we hope to get representatives of the supermarkets before us at some point soon.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
I am still confused, given how different agriculture is in England and in Scotland, about how you could negotiate a settlement with Westminster when agriculture policy is devolved, but we can come back to that. It is a long discussion. I still do not understand what your ask is going to be in two or three years’ time or what you are going to base that on.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
Okay.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2023 of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee. I remind all members who are using electronic devices to switch them to silent, please.
Our one item of business today is pre-legislative scrutiny of Scotland’s future agriculture policy. We will take evidence from NFU Scotland. I welcome to the meeting Jonnie Hall, who is general manager and director of policy at the NFUS. Thank you for coming to the meeting, Jonnie.
I must put on record that I am a bit disappointed that, despite our having invited other conveners from different sectors, the NFUS has sent only you. That does not put your witness quality anywhere in doubt, but, given that we have little time to consider the agriculture bill and that we have a very busy schedule, it is somewhat disappointing that we do not have conveners from committees that deal with livestock or less favoured areas, which is a particular area of interest to us.
That said, we have 90 minutes, and we have a range of questions. I will kick off with a question that is fairly straightforward but broad. What would the NFUS like to see in the upcoming agriculture bill? Are there any red lines that you would like to put on the record today?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
Okay. Thanks.
You mentioned less favoured areas, coupled support and conditionality. What do you want to see in the bill? We expect that it will be very much a framework bill. As you have said, it will provide powers and the ability for payments to be made, but is there anything that you want to see in it?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
I will move on to a couple of supplementaries, the first of which is a brief one from me. When we hear Chris Stark of the Climate Change Committee suggesting that we need to reduce meat consumption and cattle numbers, and when non-governmental organisations come to the committee every week and tell us that we need to reduce stock numbers and outputs, do you think that you are winning the argument? If not, what are you doing to ensure that the whole story about critical mass is getting out there? Indeed, what can the agriculture bill do to ensure that we maintain the critical mass that Jim Walker has said we have already reached? If we lose any more of our suckler cows, that is it. We are at the cliff edge. How can the agriculture bill help with that situation?
11:00Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
Based on what? Scottish Government priorities?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
But how do you quantify that? What is your ask? Would you go to the Treasury and saying, “Can we have £620 million, index linked, over the next few years?â€
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Finlay Carson
There are about six supplementaries. I know that Rachael Hamilton has to leave the meeting at quarter to 11, so I will bring in Beatrice Wishart, then Rachael Hamilton and then Ariane Burgess.