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 5030 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
I call Pam Gosal to add her question to the conversation. I will then bring in Gordon MacRae, Rhiannon Sims and anyone else either to pick it up or to go back to other points, so that we have a bit of what I would call conversation weave.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for that. It is really important to go into that detail.
I want to pull the discussion back into more of a general space. Do you think that the Scottish Government is adequately balancing the need to address the short-term housing problems with longer-term policy aims? We have begun to touch on that question; indeed, we have already heard that that might not be the case. Somebody—Chris Birt, I think—talked about priorities, but where in the mix do the priorities need to change?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
What would that look like?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
David Melhuish, you wanted to come in a while ago, as did Chris Birt and Emma Jackson. You might have forgotten the points that you wanted to make, but please come back in and scoop up anything else that has been added to the conversation.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
That would be great. You quoted stats for developments in Scotland compared with south of the border. How do those figures break down in relation to the population, given that Scotland has five point something million people? It would be interesting to understand the numbers in that context and to hear how many houses we are building in relation to population size. It would be great if you could send that information to us.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks very much.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks, Willie. I will bring in Gordon MacRae, then Rhiannon Sims.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks very much for talking about the need for a broader and more holistic approach, and the fact that people are facing not only a housing challenge but energy pressures, which are leading to rationing, self-disconnection and so on. You also mentioned people using food banks—all of that comes with cost of living pressures.
I see that Chris Birt wants to come in.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
A housing and land agency might help with, for example, the presumption against out-of-town development and development on brownfield sites. Developers are being pointed towards developing on brownfield sites, but I hear that they are not keen to go into that space. Would the agency that you propose help with paving the way for housing on such sites?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 27 February 2024
Ariane Burgess
That was a helpful addition to the conversation.