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 5056 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
I thank Mark Griffin for his question and I thank the minister for his thoughtful and extensive response to the issue of how we measure the impact. I imagine that it is also something for local authorities to ask in their consultation.
Stephanie Callaghan has a supplementary question on that matter.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for those responses, minister. I call Miles Briggs, who has some questions on the powers to freeze council tax.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
We will go to Mark Griffin, who joins us online.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thank you. I call Pam Gosal.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
It was good to get a little insight into what you are busy with in that regard, minister. That brings us to the end of our questions, so thank you again for being with us for two sessions this morning. It has been very helpful to get your views on the council tax freeze and the on-going discussions with COSLA around that issue.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
The next item on our agenda is to take evidence on the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill from two panels of witnesses. Our first panellists are from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. We are joined online by Mirren Kelly, who is the chief officer for local government finance, and Councillor Gail Macgregor, who is the environment and economy spokesperson. I welcome them to the meeting.
We will direct our questions in the first instance to Councillor Macgregor, but if Mirren Kelly would like to come in, she should type R in the chat function, please. There is no need for you to manually operate your microphones, because we will do that automatically for you.
I will start with your views on the general aims of the bill. COSLA’s submission said that the levy would
“have a positive impact on Local Government.”
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the fact that not all local authorities are expected to introduce a levy. Will that create a funding disparity between councils that have high numbers of overnight visitors and those that have relatively few?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Yes.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thank you, minister, for bearing with us on the line of questioning. I will bring in Marie McNair with a question on the long-term plans for council tax.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thank you. We previously agreed to take the next items in private, so I close the public part of the meeting.
11:38 Meeting continued in private until 12:08.Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thank you.
I remind members and witnesses that they should ensure that all their devices are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting.