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 982 contributions
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
David Torrance
I would not believe that.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
David Torrance
With regard to point 5, on community engagement, and Maria’s comments, is that not what MSPs are meant to do with surgeries at the weekends to make sure that the public can get to them easily in order to engage?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
David Torrance
I was interested in that, because I wondered whether it was about people complaining that their MSP does not hold any surgeries or is not engaging in the community and asking whether he can be held to account for that.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
David Torrance
That was, if you will remember, quite well attended, because I think that I was the chair that day. That sort of engagement works; it was not just a matter of going out there and simply doing what the committee was designed to do. At the end of each of the days, we had a general question-and-answer session with the public about how the Parliament worked, and it was good to see it promoted in that way.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
David Torrance
Recommendation 10 is that a panel should be set up
“to discuss the MSPs’ code of conduct”.
That is interesting, because we have had difficulties in the past with the code of conduct and the behaviour of some MSPs.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
David Torrance
Yes, I was.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
David Torrance
I was just going to talk about recommendation 11 in the report. Nobody will be surprised to learn that I would promote the Parliament and the committees going out into communities. In addition to the examples that you have highlighted, convener, I would also mention our visit to Loch Fyne and the Rest and Be Thankful.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
David Torrance
How important is it to embed the medication assisted treatment standards in practice, especially to ensure that individuals receive appropriate medication while they are in police custody?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
David Torrance
I would like to invite the petitioner and representatives of Who Cares? Scotland, CELCIS, the Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum, the Promise, and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland to a round-table discussion to explore issues that the petition raises. If the committee agrees to that, could we also invite some people with life experiences of the situations that are raised in the petition?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 7 December 2022
David Torrance
Before we make any further recommendations, could we write to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee to ask it what relevant work it intends to do in that area, and whether it will consider what the petition asks for?