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 1203 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
This is my final question—it just needs a yes or no response. We realise the constraints in your budgets. We have growing inequalities in society. Will you do all that you can to ensure growth in the more deprived areas of our country and focus on getting rid of those social inequalities? We have heard some examples today.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
Thank you very much.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I told you that I was playing devil’s advocate. As you know from previous encounters, I always do. You paint the scenario of one solicitor not being enough for Edinburgh Women’s Aid. Is there the opportunity between the 34 organisations that you represent to have a pool of people so that there is choice for women who may not want to go to one particular solicitor for whatever reason?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I am playing devil’s advocate here and I am thinking of a particular case that I was involved in many, many years ago where an individual thought that a solicitor was being thrust upon them. If a solicitor is associated with a particular charity, how do you deal with situations where some women may not want to use that solicitor? How do you get around that? Does that go back to the 50 calls to get a solicitor or what can we do to build up that trust?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
It was not at all long-winded. You are right to highlight that what may work in some of the larger cities may not work elsewhere.
I am interested in what you have to say about access to telephone advice. Having experienced cases where some people who I have been dealing with have found it very difficult to access a solicitor at all, having that telephone line as a last resort is probably a good approach. Do you have any examples from anywhere in the country where solicitors have provided telephone services for some of your clients as a last resort?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
My question is on a separate matter.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I have two brief points. I want to go back to Ms Horwitz’s comment on shopping around effectively. We have all had experiences of finding it difficult to find a tariff for certain things, but there are also situations where monopolies exist because of specialism. From a consumer point of view, what does that monopoly situation do to folks who seek advice in specialist areas?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I think that that was a missed opportunity. It is grand to ask about the complaints process, but there is often a feeling of distrust in certain organisations as well. It would be interesting to see whether we could access any data on that particular subject. Thank you very much.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I have no relevant interests, convener.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I will give an example that goes back a number of years so that we do not identify anyone. False disposition of land does not happen regularly but, when it does, folks are pushed to certain specialists who, basically, can charge what they like, because they are the specialists. Could those monopoly situations be ironed out to a degree with the proposed legislation?