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 888 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
That is really interesting. Thank you.
09:45Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Thanks very much. My next question is for Paul Blaker and Peter Stewart-Blacker. I think that you almost come at my earlier question in reverse. You refer to the high rate of complaints that have been upheld—they are, therefore, complaints that have gone through the SPSO’s investigation stage—and you suggest that that indicates that many public bodies are still “getting it wrong”. Could you elaborate your thinking on that?
10:45Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
I thank all the witnesses for their evidence so far. Last year, before I was a member of the committee, the ombudsman told the committee:
“we see good complaints handling in the first instance.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 5 December 2023; c 9.]
That was in relation to public bodies. Do you agree that that is one of the reasons why complaints are not fully progressed through every stage? Before you came to the meeting, I said that that is not what I, as an MSP, tend to see, but, given what the witnesses on the previous panel said, I am quite willing to accept that that might be because I see only people who are very unhappy and come to me for a bit of advice and support. However, my experience as an MSP does not back that up.
I will direct that question to Jan Savage, Adam Stachura and Fiona Collie, because my second question will probably be for Peter Stewart-Blacker and Paul Blaker, who can come in at that point.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
I want to ask you something else before I bring in Fiona Collie. Is there an impact based on the scale of seriousness, if that is the right term? Is the ombudsman able to say with confidence that investigations by public bodies are, in the main, done well? Is there a seriousness scale? The cases that eventually come to me, as an MSP—I am sure that it is the same for the charities that are represented today—seem to be quite serious and complex. Is there an issue in that regard? Is it the case that public bodies deal with the less serious cases pretty well and quickly but that things become more difficult as you go up that scale?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
I am just wondering whether the charities that you and Fiona Collie represent have seen evidence of that.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Good morning. My questions follow on from Mark Griffin’s line of questioning about the letter that was sent to the Scottish Government. The letter also proposes that legislation be amended to allow the SCS to consider previous breaches by a respondent when determining the sanction to be applied for any new contravention. Could you elaborate on the extent to which repeat offenders are a problem? What impact would the proposal have?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
That is great. The commission would like new powers to be included and a clear route for the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body to remove or replace an incumbent SCS member or the Ethical Standards Commissioner. Why is that amendment required?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
It has been well documented that licensing authorities have made it clear—they have told the committee this—that nine months is not a sufficient amount of time to process the most complex applications. Minister, what consideration are you giving to extending that deadline?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Good morning to the minister and to his team. I will follow on from the last line of questioning. Licensing authorities have asked for clarity on the operation of licence transfers, provisional licensing and also on home swaps. Minister, do you intend to provide additional guidance or update regulations in those areas and, if you are, do you know when that might happen?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
I was going to ask a follow-up question, but you have answered it. Thanks very much.