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 884 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Fulton MacGregor
I appreciate the comments that you made about Glasgow social work, which I think are very relevant.
You talked about buildings and so on being an area in which resources could be better used. Do you have any thoughts on the community asset transfers that councils have powers to use? Could they be better and more quickly used, and could more community asset transfers be done?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Fulton MacGregor
My final question is about multiyear funding settlements. Are you confident that the Scottish Government will be able to provide, from 2025, multiyear funding settlements, which would assist councils in planning for the medium term?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 21 January 2025
Fulton MacGregor
Minister, can you tell us a wee bit more about the progress of the green heat finance task force and the alternative funding mechanisms that you are considering? Can you give us some detail on the headlines from the task force’s new report, and what timescales are you working to to respond to its work?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Fulton MacGregor
Thanks for that.
Apologies, convener: I had meant to declare an interest before asking my questions. I am a registered social worker with the Scottish Social Services Council, as per my entry in the register of members’ interests.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Fulton MacGregor
Thanks. Robby Steel and David Hamilton, what would you say from a health and social work perspective?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Fulton MacGregor
My first line of questioning follows up on what my colleague Ben Macpherson asked about and what was said earlier about some of the local initiatives. David Hamilton, in your opening remarks, you mentioned the initiative in Lanarkshire, which I know that you have had some involvement in. Will you expand on that to allow the committee to understand what is happening there? I am aware that it is a good piece of work.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Fulton MacGregor
Thank you. I will not repeat the earlier discussion about how we get some of those good local initiatives to work on a more national basis, because that has been covered, but it I thought that it was important for the committee to hear what is going on in Lanarkshire. It sounds really good. As I said, I am an MSP for that area, so I was aware of some of that work.
My second question is around resources. Dr Hamilton, you touched on that, but I want to hear—both from a police perspective and an NHS and social work perspective—about the extent to which issues with staffing resources are impacting on the ability to move the collaboration work forward. What I mean by that is, do we have the necessary number of police officers, social workers and health professionals? Are there any challenges that the committee should be more aware of? Given that we have a session with the cabinet secretary coming up after this evidence session, are there issues around resources in the current climate?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 December 2024
Fulton MacGregor
That is all right.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 December 2024
Fulton MacGregor
I appreciate that frank and honest reply. That is the same with a lot of situations. There is often low public awareness about politicians and the Parliament. It is good to hear an honest response about that.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 December 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Good morning to both of our witnesses, and thanks for the evidence so far. I want to ask about the public’s level of awareness of the regulator. The committee heard some evidence that, unless you are a tenant or another service user who is involved with a landlord, there is likely to be a low level of awareness among the public. Do you accept that, or do you have a different view on it?