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 1193 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
How reliable have the revenues that are linked to military operations and planning been? How can you plan effectively when that revenue stream is uncertain?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
I have a question before we move on. You have hit upon a couple of points. You talked about Government and industry sharing data, but we have heard that there is lack of communication with communities, and the data and knowledge that we have is often not passed on to communities. Would it be fair to say that we need to do more in that regard?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
It is very brief.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
I know that it is, convener. I am not criticising you in any way, shape, or form; I am criticising the legislation as it has been formulated over many years.
As we move forward and reach new definitions, if that is where we go, I wonder whether we can bear in mind the work that has been undertaken during Lord John Scott’s mental health law review, so that what we come up with there, as that goes through the legislative process, becomes embedded, if you like, in your regulations. Do you think that that can be done?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
Do any of your colleagues want to comment on some of those questions about data gaps and experiences?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
I am a former Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care, and, having established a number of lived experience panels, I can say that those do not have to be formal. Folk will often gladly tell you their tale for the simple reason that they do not want anyone else to go through what they have gone through.
My very strong suggestion in relation to the work as we go forward is that you, minister, in collaboration with the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, ask some of the lived experience panels that already exist regarding what their life experience of that kind of situation has been. That would help to formulate much better regulations.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
I will move on a little bit. We have talked quite a lot about eligibility and criteria. Again, you have said that you would be flexible in relation to looking at change and not simply allowing this for folk with compulsory treatment orders. The convener talked about some other aspects of law and some of the old-fashioned criteria that are often in those laws. I think that the convener used the term “severely mentally impaired”, which does not sit well with me, I have to say.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
Minister, it was good to hear you say that we should start small and move to expand. We have heard from people that there has to be flexibility in the regulations and the ability to adapt as we move forward. You said that most of this has been stakeholder led, but how many voices of lived experience have you heard in the formulation of the bill and, indeed, will you hear as we move forward towards the regulations?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
Can I ask just one final question, convener?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
How do we get communities to help you to build that place-based just transition data dashboard?