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 1210 contributions
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
I get the gist—thank you.
I turn briefly to Mr Togher, whom I know from another life—it is good to see you, Pat. I would say that some of our previous discussions over the years have been about a lack of co-operation between public bodies to help an individual. Is the legislation enough, or do we need a further cultural shift so that everyone takes ownership of helping individuals?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
Good morning. I turn first to Shea Moran, because he stated very clearly that the working groups that he was involved in—the voices of lived experience—feel that elements are missing from the bill. Mr Moran, will you expand on that? What is missing? What is required for the change that you seek? Is it legislation or is it the cultural change that Suzie Mcilloney mentioned in her opening remarks?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
What is not right? Is it failures in the legislative framework or is it the interpretation of the legislation, as it stands, by certain bodies? In addition, can we do something with the new piece of legislation to make sure that the kind of uniformity and best practice that you want is exported through good legislation and regulation?
10:30Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
I do not want to put words into your mouth in any way but, when folk come to me with a problem, I often find that the initial problem that they come with is not the real problem at all—I do what we call “the delve” to find out what the underlying problem is. Are you talking about that aspect—that further delve into asking folk what the real difficulties are? Beyond that, is there enough training in trauma-informed practice on the front line to get folk to do that delve and understand what folk are going through?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
You are right to point out that it is the Governments that make the decisions. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the UK Government is making all the wrong decisions in all of this.
Do you really think that you have the influence to change minds on these extremely important issues, which are affecting people and institutions and stymieing economic growth? At the end of the day, if we are not attracting the best students here, we do not have the opportunity for them to join our workforce. In the past, many of the people who have come here to study have been some of the greatest minds and entrepreneurs we have had.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
I want to follow up Mr McGuire’s point about universities. I represent the great city of Aberdeen, where we have the University of Aberdeen and Robert Gordon University—both very important institutions. The University of Aberdeen has attracted students from overseas for centuries and RGU has done so for many decades. The EU’s youth mobility proposals, which were rejected by Labour and the Tories, are a missed opportunity. We are seeing our university institutions being held back, stymied and, in some cases, put in positions of crisis because of the inability of overseas students to get the relevant visas.
Ms Oldfather talked about the trade agreements with Australia and others. In the past, people were attracted not only from the European Union but particularly from certain places in Africa and Asia, but that seems to have gone. What is the DAG doing to look at that? What engagement have you had with the universities? I have talked about the universities in Aberdeen, but the difficulties and the inability to get students in are the same for universities throughout Scotland and these islands.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
You are optimistic in hoping that politics calms down in the UK. There might be chaos for years to come because of the decision to leave the European Union.
In your engagement with academia and the universities on these issues, do they highlight to you the major difficulties that they face because they are unable—well, they are not unable to attract folk—to get folk the necessary paperwork to study in Scotland? What are universities saying to you about their financial positions? Some have lost a huge amount of income because of that. Some have suggested that, if there are no changes, they might be in precarious positions in the future, which they would not be in if we still had free movement.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
I am glad that you have managed to help to open one door, but there are still many more doors to open.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
Yes, please. It is good to see you.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 5 June 2024
Kevin Stewart
You mentioned data. We have discussed the fact that there are gaps in data gathering. You said that you are going to take stock of that to see what needs to be done.
I have a question that relates to data, but is also about policy formulation and getting this right. How will you include the voices of lived experience in shaping the future and eradicating the disability employment gap? The voices of lived experience are key, as far as I am concerned. People with lived experience know what works for them, they know what does not work and they know what they want.
We have heard from folks who want their independence and who have aspirations. We have even heard from folk who want to create their own businesses. How do we ensure that their voices are heard? How do you go about listening to them when it comes to data gathering and policy formulation?