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 605 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Mark Griffin
Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Mark Griffin
It would be helpful if you could let the committee know as soon as you have any detail on that. That would be worth while.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Mark Griffin
Finally, I want to ask about the power to introduce a levy. Has there been any difficulty in developing the bill or the programme while we wait for the devolution of the power that would enable the introduction of a levy?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Mark Griffin
Do you have a timeline for the expected devolution of power to introduce the levy?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Mark Griffin
Why has that been left to regulations? Why is there no more detail up front to make developers aware of what is coming down the track?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Mark Griffin
The bill gives Scottish ministers the power to establish a responsible developers scheme. Are you able to set out how the scheme will speed up the remediation of potentially unsafe buildings?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Mark Griffin
The policy memorandum refers to a “proportionate approach”. What will be the Government’s attitude towards the varying levels of size of house builders? Small and medium-sized enterprises are being treated very differently in the scheme down south. What will the Government’s approach on that be in Scotland?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
Mark Griffin
That reflects evidence that SCOSS has given to committees, in which it has—I do not know whether “complained” is the right word—raised concerns about the notice periods that it gets from Government and the time that it has to report on regulations. The provisions reflect some of SCOSS’s early work that suggests that a greater lead-in time is needed.
However, we have been careful to include a provision that says that, when any regulation that is made by the Government is considered to be urgent, the responsibility to consult or timescales will be waived. The bill reflects issues with working practice that SCOSS raised but still gives the flexibility to be, as you say, fleet of foot if the Government feels that regulations need to be introduced urgently.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
Mark Griffin
I do not know what the UK Labour manifesto will contain. All that I can say is that, in the devolution to Scotland of that entitlement, I want a much stronger advisory council, with its own research power, to be in place to make that argument.
As you said, changes at a UK level would lead to consequentials. However, the Scottish Fiscal Commission has projected that the budget for that entitlement is due to fall, which creates headroom in the budget that has been transferred. There is capacity to make changes specifically on entitlement. However, to focus purely on the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament aspects of that, I hope that the new council would have a better relationship to start with and that its greater powers to commission research independently would make a difference.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
Mark Griffin
Absolutely. That is why schedule 3 of the bill links to the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. That would achieve the gender balance requirements that are crucially important to starting the work on addressing the failures of the current system when it comes to women.