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 1251 contributions
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. We want to hear the views of smaller designated religious charities on what would happen if they were involved.
The requirement for charities to have a connection to Scotland is now included in the bill. Do the witnesses consider that to be an appropriate measure? Are there any concerns about that?
10:45Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Miles Briggs
I asked the first panel of witnesses a question on giving OSCR powers to appoint interim trustees in specific circumstances where there are no trustees to be found or where trustees are not willing to act. Have the witnesses had any experience of that? Would it be a helpful measure in an emergency situation to support and stabilise a charity?
As nobody has a comment on that, perhaps we need to do more digging into where the idea has come from.
On maintaining a register of charity mergers to make it easier for legacies to be transferred in situations where the original legacy was made to a charity that has since merged and changed its name, do the witnesses have any concerns, or is it a tidying-up measure, as we heard earlier?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Is there anything around the legacy issue that we have not captured and that could be improved, or is it straightforward enough? Increasingly, charities look at charitable legacy giving, which might become a greater issue in the future with the impact of the bill and there potentially being fewer charities.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Thank you.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. Thank you.
As no one has anything contrary to that that they want to add, I will move on to my final questions, on powers to appoint interim trustees in specific circumstances where there are no trustees. We have touched on that already. How, in practice, could that work? You have already said that it is sometimes difficult enough to find people, but how, in practice, might those powers present challenges as to who the interim trustees would be?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Miles Briggs
It is a question of whether the mechanism is an emergency measure more than anything. We will look into that further, I hope.
I turn now to a finance question on the merging of charities. I declare an interest in that I chair the Heart of Scotland appeal. Do the provisions make it easier for legacy charities and resources to be transferred in such situations? You might wish to add something about cases in which a charity has merged with another organisation or has changed its name, for instance.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us. What are your views on extending OSCR’s powers to allow it to undertake inquiries into former charities and their trustees? I will start with Rami Okasha.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 28 February 2023
Miles Briggs
I want to bring together some of the questions that Annie Wells, Mark Griffin and Marie McNair asked. My reading of where we are with being able to empower communities, which comes from the schemes that I have been involved with in my area, is that middle-class communities know how to use the process and are well organised in doing so. How can we further embed empowerment, especially for those who are furthest removed from decision making and the planning system, so that they can organise in a way that allows them to create genuinely sustainable projects that can take over community assets or make the system work for them?
11:00Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 28 February 2023
Miles Briggs
The witnesses have touched on statutory partners throughout the session. Do you believe that anyone who is not included in schedule 1 to the 2015 act should be included? On the flipside, should anyone be excluded from those conversations? We can perhaps start on the positive and think about who should be included.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 28 February 2023
Miles Briggs
That is not just an issue with the 2015 act. In relation to the integration of health and social care, housing is excluded. It is about creating that opportunity.