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 1582 contributions
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Collette Stevenson
On the theme of communications with clients, I will bring in Paul O’Kane.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Collette Stevenson
Yes—if the question is quick and concise. I am conscious of the time—we still have quite a lot of members wanting to come in with questions. Thanks.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Collette Stevenson
That would be really helpful. On estimating levels of fraud and error, I invite Bob Doris in.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2024
Collette Stevenson
We have a bit of time in hand.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Collette Stevenson
A very good morning to you, and welcome to the second meeting in 2024 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have received apologies from Roz McCall and John Mason. I welcome James Dornan, who is online, as a substitute for John Mason.
Our first item of business is a decision on taking in private item 4 on our agenda. Are we agreed on doing so?
Members indicated agreement.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Collette Stevenson
Our next item is the consideration of a Scottish statutory instrument: the Welfare Foods (Best Start Foods) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2023, which is subject to the negative procedure. Its purpose is to amend the Welfare Foods (Best Start Foods) (Scotland) Regulations 2019. The main changes are the removal of the income thresholds for qualifying benefits; a further alignment of the eligibility criteria with the best start grant and Scottish child payment; and some technical changes to how payments are made. Do members have any comments on the instrument?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Collette Stevenson
I call James Dornan, who also joins us remotely.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Collette Stevenson
I am sorry, but can I stop you there? I am really conscious of the time.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Collette Stevenson
I am conscious of the time. We still have a lot of questions to get through.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Collette Stevenson
On the basis of transparency, accountability and participation, the equality and fairer Scotland statement is intended to consider the impact of budget decisions. However, it does not really identify how and why budget allocations have changed or how those changes impact on equality and human rights. Why is that?