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 759 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Lastly, I speak to a lot of businesses, and colleges are vital for businesses’ journey to getting the right skills. As a visitor to the committee, I cannot emphasise this enough: please think about all the questions that have been asked today by colleagues. We need to invest in colleges; we need to help them, whether through capital funding or pupils; and we need to do much more. I cannot emphasise enough how often colleges speak to me about funding cuts. You talked earlier about where to get the funding, but you are the minister, so you should be telling us where you can move money around—I do not mean by making cuts. We need to consider what is best for colleges, because businesses are crying out for those skills.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Good morning, minister and officials. My question follows Bob Doris’s question about closing the funding gap.
Not only do colleges get less per student than universities, but the Improvement Service’s local government benchmarking framework shows that average gross spend per pupil in Scotland in 2020-21 was £9,273 for pre-school education, £5,916 at primary school and £7,657 at secondary school. Why is funding for colleges so much lower than funding for universities and schools? Are university students and school pupils worth more than college students?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
I thank the minister for being honest. We need to use all the organisations and partnerships out there to ensure that we reach out.
The good news is that my mother came back to me to ask about one of the groups. It was to do with an exercise that you are doing out there through one of the organisations. She said, “Should I go to this with my friends?” I said that she certainly should. That is the first time that the Government has reached out to my mum—in that many years, it has never reached out before, and she is quite heavily involved with the community.
That is good news. However, although it is fantastic that those organisations—I talk to all the organisations that you mentioned—are doing a great job, could the Government sometimes do more to get out there and reach people, maybe in religious settings? The congregations in religious settings are massive. The Government could reach out in that way to raise awareness first, rather than just going in and collecting data. Sometimes people need to know who you are and what you are doing—it is about making an introduction, rather than going straight into using an organisation. That approach can be helpful.
Sometimes people are missed. As I said, my mother found out about that organisation only because somebody spoke about it in the temple, which is where she is all the time. I was very pleased to hear that the Government is reaching out in that way. What are your views on that, minister?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Good morning, minister. In your opening statement, you spoke about reaching out in order to address violence against women and girls. How do you reach communities that are hard to reach, such as black, Asian and ethnic minority communities? Last week, we heard that some communities are hesitant about letting people in, answering questions and giving their details, because, sometimes, they feel that they are not heard or they do not know why they should give the information. It would be good to know how the Government is reaching out to those communities. Do you provide any feedback to people after taking information from them?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
I thank the minister for that answer.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
The point that Clare Gallagher made about the importance of plain English was a valid one.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Thank you. That point about going back to people to show that their information was valuable is very important. That will make them feel willing to open up again. I welcome your recognition that a lot of change is needed. I saw what happened with vaccination in gurdwaras and mosques. It was brilliant how we rolled out that process, and we should certainly learn from that.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming along.
I want to follow on from what Clare Gallagher said about marginalised groups. I have participated in many round-table discussions with many members of black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and have asked them whether the fact that they always feel that they are not included is to do with particular policies or decision making.
You mentioned that you go out and talk to more than 600 groups but, somehow, information is not reaching those people on the ground. I understand what you said about there being a trust element—I absolutely agree. I come from one of those communities. There is a feeling of, “Why you want to use our information? If you use it, will something change?” I am fully aware that members of those communities question whether anything will change.
Should we consider changing our tactics a bit, rather than using the same groups? Should we involve wider community groups and perhaps even think about talking to people in more religious settings, where a lot of belief is? My family comes from a Sikh background. Maybe you could go to the gurdwara to speak to people. You could even have a group there—maybe downstairs, not where the main congregation is—through which you could provide information, or you could hold a workshop. Every religious setting, whether it is a mosque, a gurdwara or a synagogue, will have schools associated with it. Is that something that could be considered as a way of getting more information to those people so that they can be more involved in decision making?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
The letter fails to mention why the issue was not identified by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service. Why is that the case?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
I am just looking to find out whether the concerns that were raised at that time by those people and organisations have been addressed in the bill. It is good that the cabinet secretary mentioned age and a few other concerns, but there are many other concerns that people have raised. Have those concerns been addressed in the bill?