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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 3266 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 31 January 2024
Gillian Martin
The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands has been leading on that issue. The Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which was the bill that fell, had exactly the same provisions that this bill has. All of this has been a long-standing discussion. In effect, the UK Government has taken that part of the kept animals bill and put it into a new bill.
Mairi Gougeon and her officials had extensive discussions about the particular issues that you raise, and we are confident that they have been heard. There is no provision at the moment to have anything that would mean that the export or the travel of animals from island producers to the mainland will be impacted at all by the bill.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
I will pass that question to Andrew Voas, because he was involved in the code of practice.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
Yes, but it might be worth my going over what I imagine Ms McAllan would have said to the committee at the time. The move from welfare codes of practice to welfare guidance documents was discussed in advance with all the key stakeholders. Before the publication of that first guidance document, the then minister asked officials to discuss the change further with animal welfare organisations and the sector, and they were content with the move. Officials then had further discussions off the back of that with OneKind and Compassion in World Farming, both of which confirmed that they did not raise any objections and that they had consulted with the sector.
Since the guidance documents have been put in place for laying hens and meat chickens, there has been absolutely no pushback on their being guidance documents rather than codes of practice.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
I move that the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee recommends that the Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2024 be approved
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
I think that even the codes gave enforcement agencies an idea of the standards that were required for the welfare of whichever animal. The guidance is not binding—the binding aspect is that there should be access to the guidance.
To be quite honest, the guidance and the codes are very similar. England and Wales were also looking at a change like this. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was proposing to issue guidance that was jointly owned by Government and industry. We decided that our guidance would be Government led and Government owned, which means that we can ensure that the whole range of stakeholders’ views is taken into account.
Stakeholders are broadly content with the approach. They were content with the same approach for laying hens and meat chickens. We are putting forward today not so much a policy change from code to guidance—my predecessor did that previously at the committee—but a technical instrument that swaps out the pigs code of practice for guidance on pig welfare.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
There is no requirement for us to consult, but we do not operate in that way. It is not in our interests or the interests of the sector for the Government to act to produce guidance in a vacuum. Stakeholders have to be invested in guidance and it has to be produced in collaboration with them so that it lands properly and so that it can be used and trusted. That is the approach that we will always take to anything like this that we produce. There is nothing that compels us to do it, but it is good practice.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
The fact is that we still consult with stakeholders ahead of compiling the guidance. Working with stakeholders, animal welfare agencies and the farming community on what should be in the guidance is very much a consultative process that officials undertake.
I suppose that the difference between a code and a guidance document is that, although we give the committee notice of a guidance document—you would have had sight of it in November—it does not have to undergo parliamentary scrutiny in order to be applied. As you will appreciate, we are under a great deal of pressure in terms of timing and the work programmes of committees. We also want to be able to be fleet of foot when it comes to updating or changing guidance.
The instrument allows us to swap out an outdated document for a new, updated one, and to do that reasonably quickly, so that people have the right information when they are farming their animals.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
My predecessor, Màiri McAllan, took forward this change when she was minister in this portfolio. She set out the rationale for the change in policy to the committee in terms of changing from a code to guidance.
The reason for it is to make the process more streamlined and quicker. It takes time for codes to go through a process that requires parliamentary scrutiny and there might be situations in which pressing updates concerning animal welfare need to be applied quite quickly, so that decision was made. With the guidance, we are not going to remove any of the consultation or work with stakeholders.
I imagine, convener, that you have looked at the guidance that we are talking about. It is very straightforward. It is advice on how animals—pigs, in this instance—should be treated, on the conditions that they should be kept in and on everything else in relation to their welfare that should be adhered to. It is not so much a change in policy, because the policy is in the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 and the Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Regulations 2010. There is no change in policy—it is really just a change to guidance.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
I am not entirely sure that it is a case of power. We are talking about guidance here, not about policy change.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Gillian Martin
Yes, but consultation still happens. The decision to change from codes to guidance has already happened. Today, we are just adding another document to the guidance and removing the outdated code.