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 778 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 January 2025
Lorna Slater
That is for the secure creditor who is going to be updating—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 January 2025
Lorna Slater
I suppose that that is true from the point of view of the secure creditor, but you assume that they have obtained that information accurately from the debtor.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 January 2025
Lorna Slater
That is the point.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 January 2025
Lorna Slater
I guess that a debtor who is putting a pledge forward needs to understand that their data then becomes visible publicly. That is something that they need to be aware of. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, convener.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 January 2025
Lorna Slater
That would clearly be quite a lot of work. In this case, the individual consumer—someone who was not involved in the transaction at all and might just be a customer—would have to go to the secured creditor to get the correction, even though they were not at fault in any way. Could a mechanism be considered to inform the registrar of that situation, so that the registrar could contact the secured lender? If my home address ended up on the register, it would seem a bit onerous for me, as an individual, to have to go through that arduous route to correct the record.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 January 2025
Lorna Slater
Maybe you could write to us on that, because it is an interesting point. We all want to make sure that the registers are accurate, and you can imagine a small businessperson, who needs their asset back, not being able to get hold of it.
Is there enough information in the register to identify those carrying out registrations, especially if they are outwith the United Kingdom? How do we ensure that the register identifies the person or the business who can be contacted? If third parties are doing the registering, how do we ensure that they have appropriate permissions to do so? How do we ensure the privacy of the information that is being shared? How can third parties or people who find errors in the register correct those? You have mentioned the correction procedure, but is that available to a third party?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
Lorna Slater
Thank you, convener.
I note what was said earlier about sharing best practice, and I am really interested to hear specifically about the lessons that have been learned from the existing deals. Many of them are now quite mature, so the committee has been talking about what another tranche of deals would look like. Overall, it seems that quite a lot of positive has come from those deals, but if we were to do this again—if we decided that it is worth while for multiple levels of Government and industry to work together to create such deals—what would you do differently and what would be the same? Is it worth doing again? What lessons have been learned? What would we keep and what would we change for next time?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
Lorna Slater
I want to thank you very much for coming this morning, secretary of state. Your predecessor did not accept invitations to give evidence to this Parliament, and we are delighted that you have.
The committee has taken substantial evidence on the benefits of collaborative long-term working between levels of government and industry, which some of these deals have supported. Many of the projects have been grass roots-led and prioritise sustainability and innovation. However, that is not true for all the projects. In the older regional deals, there are some dinosaur road and car-based projects initiated by Transport Scotland, of which the Sheriffhall roundabout—which I know the secretary of state will be familiar with—is the one with which I am most familiar. My question is on the same theme as that pursued by Jamie Halcro Johnston. It appears that Transport Scotland could not get that project prioritised or funded through normal means, so it has turned to the deal. However, it is a bit of a dinosaur. It was proposed before any Government in the UK had declared a climate emergency and before the Scottish Government had set a target to reduce car kilometres by 20 per cent, and there is a grass-roots local campaign against it.
The project is stuck. It is demonstrably not being built, but if you ask any level of government why we cannot reprioritise the funds or change up the project, the answer is always because it is part of the region deal and down to “that Government”, with everyone pointing fingers, which means that we cannot change anything. The question is how Governments can, with democratic mandates that change over time, adjust these longer projects to align with current priorities. It just feels like hands are tied.
10:00Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
Lorna Slater
I also have a question about the future. How do you see any new tranche of city region deals—and I am interested in whether you think that a new tranche of deals is a good idea—fitting into the investment that is needed to green the economy and to transition away from fossil fuels and restore nature? Given the urgency of the climate crisis, should that be a primary aim of any future deals?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
Lorna Slater
I wondered whether now is a good time for me to ask my question because it follows on from yours, convener. Is that all right?