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, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
This might be a little off script but, on the subject of rural and island housing, we have a mandate from the Government to ensure that all buildings are energy efficient by 2025. About 170,000 homes in Scotland are off the gas grid, of which probably 40,000 are not suitable for the installation of air-source pumps and things. That might lead to a situation where people in islands in particular face bills of about £30,000 to install heat pumps or whatever.
Have you done any work to look at the impact on rural housing, and specifically island housing, given the three-year target to have houses at the highest efficiency levels? Have you made any bids for further funding to your portfolio to address that?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
That concludes our list of questions. Cabinet secretary, you have committed to come back to us on quite a number of areas. Some more detail would be welcome, including a timescale for the £61 million to potentially come back into the portfolio. I believe that a conveners debate on the budget is scheduled for 26 January. A response to the committee before then would be most helpful to inform our contribution to that debate.
I thank you and your officials for your contributions.
Meeting closed at 10:47.Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
Good morning, and happy new year to everyone. Welcome to the first meeting in 2023 of the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee. I remind members who are using electronic devices to switch them to silent mode, please. Mercedes Villalba will join us at approximately 10 am.
Our single item of business today is evidence on the 2023-24 Scottish Government budget. I welcome to the meeting Mairi Gougeon, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands, and her supporting officials: George Burgess, director of agriculture and rural economy; Erica Clarkson, joint head of division, rural and island futures; Sheetal Mehra, head of strategic engagement for budget and spending review; and Iain Wallace, head of strategy and change, Marine Scotland. I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
Before we move on to the final theme, I have a question. The budget cut of more than £60 million that was announced in the autumn included a cut of £2.2 million to Marine Scotland through savings from enhanced recruitment controls and forecast changes in research programmes. Can you tell us what that means in practice on the ground?
10:30Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. I will kick off.
We have fairly ambitious plans for agriculture and marine when it comes to climate change and biodiversity. We are also very aware of the pressures faced by island communities, with depopulation and so on. This is a very simple question that maybe does not have a simple answer. What are the practical implications of the current inflationary pressures on the rural affairs budget, and how will you deal with them?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
We will now move on to agriculture funding and reforms.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
I will bring in Ariane Burgess to carry on that theme, unless Jenni Minto’s supplementary question is to do with testing. Is it, Jenni?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
This discussion is bizarre. George, you talk the talk, and it all sounds very good—you do the soil test and the work after it, and you will save money. That is all good, and it improves biodiversity and helps to tackle climate change. Cabinet secretary, you said that it is not about just ticking a box, but the sad fact is that, up to 12 December, only 12 people had ticked the box. We do not even know whether those 12 people went on to do the wonderful and right things that George Burgess talked about. Given that funding is available for something that is the key to future profitability, future low-impact farming and so on, it seems bizarre that we have had such a massively slow uptake.
You suggested in a letter on the pre-budget scrutiny that the national test programme has been “slow” with a
“mixture of feedback from the sector”.
What is the feedback from the sector? Why is the programme not working? If it is a simple process that results in far better farming, profitability-wise, for the farmer and for climate change and biodiversity, why do we have such a shockingly low uptake? It cannot be about just the lull between people doing the test and claiming, because farmers are not renowned for doing something and not claiming the money back. Where has it all gone wrong?
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
Jim Fairlie has a supplementary question.
Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Finlay Carson
Has any assessment been made of the impact on some of the businesses that are trying to trade out of difficult situations such as Covid? We are looking at businesses developing, and it will be over two years before funding is available for the type of business development that we have seen through the scheme before. How many businesses might be adversely impacted by a lack of funding in the next two years and more?