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 2221 contributions
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
I have a final question before I bring in Bill Kidd. You touched on Ukraine in your opening comments. Any of the instruments that came to the committee will have breached the 28-day rule, which is understandable. Do you anticipate any further instruments coming forward on Ukraine?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
Minister, you will be aware that our predecessor committee welcomed the Scottish Government’s work in meeting almost all of its historical commitments by the end of the previous parliamentary session. The committee certainly wanted to progress that so that there was a clean slate for the current session.
However, there is still one outstanding commitment, and that is—
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
—the Scotland Act 1998 (Specification of Functions and Transfer of Property etc) Order 2019. Will you provide the committee with an update on where things are with that?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
Thank you.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
Is the committee content with the instruments?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
Thank you—that is on the record.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
Is the committee content with the instruments?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
Under agenda item 4, we are considering one instrument, on which no points have been raised.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
I suspend the meeting until 10.30.
10:04 Meeting suspended.Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Stuart McMillan
I am sure that our colleagues from the committee would welcome that further engagement.
I also have a question in relation to the Building (Scotland) Amendment (Amendment) (No 2) Regulations 2022 (SSI 2022/340). The regulations amended SSI 2022/136 by amending the date on which new mandatory energy and environmental standards for buildings and building work are introduced from 1 December 2022 to 1 February 2023. The committee asked the Scottish Government for an explanation for the 28-day breach, given that the laying requirements were complied with the last time the deadline was postponed. The Scottish Government advised that the breach had occurred due to delay in the last engagement with providers.
What processes does the Scottish Government have in place to manage the planning and timescales for delaying planned implementation of legislation, and what is done to ensure that reviews of any delayed implementations are regularly carried out?