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 1225 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
Grand. Thank you, convener.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
Stuart Bews, can we have the Aberdeen perspective?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
You have said that you will have a look-see at those plans as you build the LDP. That is fair enough in some regards. I would be interested in knowing what you are doing to help poorer communities to get the expertise to develop local place plans.
You missed out the “planning for real” element—that is, the community planning aspect. In terms of the formulation of local place plans, are you as an authority bringing together the community planning aspect of the “planning for real” approach in order to get this right not just for the LDP but to create the vision for the future for individual communities across Moray?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
Okay. So, if I come back to communities in Moray, which I quite often do, and ask folk in Buckie, Fochabers, Forres or wherever it may be, “How did that linkage between community planning and spatial planning work? Did it work for your area?” they will turn round to me and say, “Yeah, Moray did it right.”
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
My next question is probably for you, Alison, and for Alasdair Ross. This morning, we heard from folks from across the north-east of Scotland who very definitely have a vision for their places—there was absolutely no doubt about that. Are local authorities, the Scottish Government and other public bodies listening to the degree that they should when it comes to that vision? Do you share my view that we should use that bottom-up vision rather than a top-down one to ensure that we get the just transition absolutely right?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 November 2023
Kevin Stewart
I suppose that it would be difficult for community groups to handle that because they are voluntary.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 25 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
Sometimes, when folks see this kind of bill, they want all of the meat there and then, but this evidence session, this inquiry and the scrutiny of it all gives us the opportunity to go into more depth to make sure that the bill is actually the right one and will help folk.
Joe McMonagle was talking about rambling on, but I do not think that you have done that today. The evidence that you have given is extremely useful. I stand to be corrected, but I think that this is the first time during oral evidence taking that we have heard folk talk about the debt and mental health evidence form to any huge degree. For many who have watched this meeting but not looked at all the background, that will be a new thing. What you have done today has shone some more light on all that.
I want to come back to one of the most important points in all this, which is something that will not necessarily require a huge change in legislation or regulation. You talked about the training that you and your front-line staff have undertaken through ASIST. I am sure that many of your staff, if not all of them, have done trauma-informed practice training and various other training.
From the evidence that the committee has received, we are not sure what training is being done on the other side with mental health professionals, social workers and others around their knowledge of debt advice that they can pass on to their clients. In some areas, other areas of business, Government and local authorities have come together to put in place toolkits so that everybody knows what is required to do the best for the person concerned. Have you done anything about toolkits for social workers, mental health professionals and others who you deal with on behalf of clients? Has anything like that been done previously to get the smoothest possible journey for folks at what are sometimes the most traumatic times? That question is for Joe first.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 25 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
Although blips have happened over the past wee while in relation to the issue, your local authority seems to be, or to have been, on the ball. However, nationally, we do not have a set advice and help toolkit for everyone who is involved. Do you think that that would be beneficial?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 25 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
Grand. Natalia, do you have any comments on that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 25 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
Very briefly, you are looking at this from the debt advice side, Natalia, and I understand, because that is who you folks are. Would a toolkit like that be helpful, not just for debt advice but for the likes of GPs and link workers that Joe McMonagle spoke about—all the people who are involved in this process and helping folk—so that they follow the same lines in getting the right advice for clients as well?