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 728 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
Good morning to the panel. I want to move on to a slightly different subject, and I will start with you, Carmel. You opened up with a very positive message about the outcomes that have been achieved. Last night, I was looking through the slides that you provided, and I was very interested in one slide on the breakdown of jobs per sector, which, from my reading, showed that there is a high percentage of individuals going into food services, restaurants, hospitality and retail. Those are very important sectors of the economy, but there will be a perception—perhaps unfair—that they are low skilled and low paid compared with other parts of the economy. I would be interested to get your perception of that. Why are those sectors so heavily represented in the outcomes for the people you are helping?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
Thank you.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
Is that pattern something that you recognise? Do the sectors tend to be retail and hospitality, say?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
Is it the case that, once people are in an organisation, particularly a large employer, they have an opportunity to advance if they perform well?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
You were nodding along to that, Charlie.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
I have a couple of specific questions that I would like to put to the panel on issues that have already been talked about more generally. One issue is on reasonable adjustments and the second is on access to work. I will start with Angela Matthews, who has talked about those already.
First, we know that there is a right to reasonable adjustments, but what are the barriers to employees requesting and accessing reasonable adjustments?
Secondly, you have already said quite a lot about access to work. Specifically, what needs to be done for access to work to improve and to meet the needs of disabled people in the workplace?
I will start with Angela, then others can come in, if they want to.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
Okay. Thanks very much. Chirsty, do you want to come in?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
I should say that we met people from The Usual Place two weeks ago.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
Thank you very much. That is really helpful.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Murdo Fraser
Thank you very much, Angela. It was very helpful to have that spelled out in detail, because the committee is looking for solutions that we can recommend.
I will go to Vikki Manson next. We have heard a lot about reasonable adjustments, about what might be done and what the barriers are. I am interested in hearing the FSB’s perspective on that.