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.
Displaying 2616 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
Will the minister say how she has sought to correct Mr Jack’s misrepresentations and misunderstandings of the way that devolution works across these islands?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
The Secretary of State for Scotland is actively seeking to sabotage not only the DRS, with all its benefits for litter reduction, recycling and climate emissions, but the whole basis of devolution, including the right of this Parliament, and of the Welsh Senedd, to deliver DRS schemes across the UK that include glass—[Interruption.]
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
Is how we define culture and the creative sector an issue? Creative Stirling is a very creative organisation that works in the cultural space and the regeneration space, but its physical space is an abandoned high street department store. It does not occupy a traditional cultural venue and it works in a very unsiloed way to meet its various objectives, although it would probably go to Creative Scotland for funding. Is there a fuzziness in how the creative sector operates, how it accesses opportunities and spaces and, therefore, how it is planned?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
Do you mean that that whole area—civic space, green space and interconnected spaces between communities—is about creative design?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
The question that comes out of that is what culture can do for planning and place making. The final question that I have been pondering concerns the local place plan process. From the way that you describe it, it seems that, at its heart, it is quite co-creative. In so, where are creative and cultural organisations in that? We look to planners and planning departments—which are underfunded, perhaps—to deliver the process, but is there a role for creative organisations in supporting planning charrettes and accessing and enabling the voices of young people and other disadvantaged groups in the process? Are there examples of a creative sector or creative groups in communities working with planners to assist in the local place plan process and help to create the vision? That feels like quite an exciting opportunity.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
I am interested to hear how you think the dial has shifted since Covid and what some of the challenges and opportunities are. Looking around some of the communities that are close to me, I notice that high streets look very different now and shop spaces are opening up. During Covid, there was more discussion about the value of green space and we started to think about how streets could look different and how civic spaces could be opened up. I guess that there were some opportunities there, but cultural organisations are also facing into some headwinds. It would be interesting to get your views on how the post-Covid world looks a little bit different and the implications of that.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
You are referring to pop-up shops, pop-up facilities and creative opportunities.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
In the middle of the cost of living crisis, the University of St Andrews is increasing rents in its student halls by 8 per cent. Students are at risk of being plunged into poverty as the university lines its pockets. Does the First Minister agree that a rent increase of that scale is completely unacceptable? Will he join me in calling on the university to reverse that decision?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 17 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
Will Alex Rowley give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 17 May 2023
Mark Ruskell
Will the member give way?