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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 1157 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
We move to questions from Marie McNair.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
Welcome back. I welcome our second panel: Dr Alison Hosie, research officer for the Scottish Human Rights Commission; and Sara Cowan, co-ordinator for the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, who joins us remotely. Thank you for joining us today. I ask you both to make an opening statement.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
Our third agenda item is consideration of two draft affirmative instruments: the draft Upper Tribunal for Scotland Bus Registration Appeals (Composition) Regulations 2024 and the draft Upper Tribunal for Scotland (Transfer of Functions of the Transport Tribunal) Regulations 2024. I welcome to the meeting, Siobhian Brown, Minister for Victims and Community Safety, and Alasdair Thomson, senior policy officer, tribunals. Thank you for joining us this morning. I refer members to paper 2 and invite the minister to speak to the draft regulations.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
Good morning and welcome to the 22nd meeting of 2024, in session 6, of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee.
Two members, Maggie Chapman and Paul O’Kane, are joining us remotely. We also have two new members of our committee. I thank Meghan Gallacher and Annie Wells for their contributions during their time as committee members. I welcome to the committee Tess White and I welcome back Pam Gosal, who is returning to the committee.
Under our first agenda item, I invite Pam Gosal and Tess White to declare any relevant interests.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
Does the committee agree to delegate to me approval of the publication of a short factual report on our deliberations on the affirmative SSIs that we have considered today?
Members indicated agreement.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
That completes our consideration of the two affirmative instruments. I thank the minister and her official for joining us today. We will now suspend briefly for a changeover of witnesses.
10:07 Meeting suspended.Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
The open budget survey makes several recommendations for the Scottish Government on improving transparency. Has the SHRC engaged with the Scottish Government on approaches to implementing any of those recommended changes?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
Thank you so much for your time. We will go into private to consider the evidence that we have taken today.
12:28 Meeting continued in private until 12:47.Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
That was really helpful.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Karen Adam
Thank you very much. We will move to questions from members. Last year, the committee heard that the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement and other equalities documents that accompany the budget should be made more prominent. How should an increased volume of available information be presented accessibly? Are there any documents or content that you feel are superfluous?