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 1271 contributions
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Good morning, panel. Thank you for joining us. The changes that are proposed in the bill would allow OSCR to investigate former charities and their trustees. I will ask a couple of questions with regard to that. Is it appropriate for OSCR to be able to issue positive directions following that inquiry work?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Good morning, panel. I want to ask some questions about how the bill will impact on the number of charities in Scotland. Do you think that it will result in fewer charities in Scotland if it passes?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Have you done any work to quantify what that will look like and how many charities we are talking about?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Do you think that removing charitable status from organisations that have failed to submit their accounts is an appropriate measure? Is that the very last resort in trying to work with them to get that information?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Have you seen improvements when there is co-location of services, especially in rural communities? I grew up in Bankfoot in Perthshire. Looking back, what was there during my childhood has all gone, from the police station to the nursing provision. Now, services are co-located in the new church centre. There is lots going on there, but it has all had to come together, and I do not know whether that has been of benefit to some services and of detriment to others. Is there any data on how people change how they access such services?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Thanks for that. Jennifer, did you want to come in?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. One of my concerns about where the 2015 act has not really made progress is that it outlines a process but not necessarily an outcome for people to focus on. How could the act be improved to empower communities and get them the outcome that they all want, rather than the process stopping that sometimes?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Is that final bit of resource the main challenge to shared leadership? I know that there are resources for administration and support services, but there is also the cost of delivering an outcome. I note that, in its submission, Glasgow City Council states that the local authority remains the dominant partner in its CPP, so is it that final financial barrier that is stopping some of these projects moving forward? What you have said suggests that it is nothing to do with being willing to let communities take these things forward.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. My questions relate to the issue that Fiona Robertson has just touched on—the diversion of resources for shared priorities. Do you have examples of where a change in culture and partnership working has facilitated that?
I was interested to hear Anna Whelan talk about individual island plans. How do those shape the way in which resources are allocated?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Miles Briggs
Does anyone else have anything to add?