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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 1769 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you very much for that. It was really helpful—particularly your analysis of the human rights that are at play here. It is really important that we have a solid understanding of those if we are going to take a human rights-based approach to the work, which I hope and believe we will.
I have a question that sort of follows on from some of the conversation. Forgive me if it sounds as though we are labouring the point, but it is important that we get this right, for all the reasons that we have rehearsed.
In the SHRC submission, you say that the legislation should be drawn up to ensure that there is no interference with religious thought or access to non-judgmental support such as has just been described. Can you tell us a bit more specifically about how that would be drafted? For example, would it be a lift and lay from the Victoria legislation, or would it be something different? Is there something missing from that legislation or something that should be amended?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
The equalities commission in Victoria has a specific role in the Victoria legislation to mediate, intervene and investigate. Could that work in Scotland? If so, who could play that role?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you. I apologise for skipping ahead to the international stuff. I realised that I stopped the conversation on Pam Gosal’s question—I apologise for that.
My question has almost been answered by what has been said. In its submission, the Equality and Human Rights Commission talks about a
“harms-based approach, which disregards benign intent”.
Given what we have heard about the rapporteur’s definition of harm and the three prongs, we could make an assumption, but how would you define “benign intent”?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 16 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you, minister, for drawing the matter to our attention. I see no reason why we should not support the LCM. In fact, I think that if we do not, we will deny payments to some individuals. I agree that a legislative consent motion is the right thing at this time.
We are constantly hearing about additional changes to benefits; this morning we heard from a number of poverty organisations strong evidence that we need to be doing things around eligibility for disability benefits and carers benefits sooner rather than later. We hear consistently that the system is almost at capacity in terms of safe and secure delivery of the benefits that we are already delivering. Is now the time to look at capacity in the system, and to consider what additional resources might be needed?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 16 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you, convener, for giving me another one, because I know that I have asked a number already.
I want to put on record that I think that the £20 uplift to universal credit was necessary, because we had the lowest level of social security in decades. To take that away will leave families completely destitute: they will be unable to buy food and so on. Everyone has made the point about how serious that is and the decision must be reversed. I also think that not extending it to legacy benefits was discrimination. Chris Birt’s point about disabled people still going hungry is absolutely key, and the uplift should have been applied to those benefits.
I am getting quite frustrated with both Governments giving the answer that to start doing work on certain things would be logistically difficult or impossible because of IT systems—we hear that quite a bit. There is an urgent need to act to put money in people’s pockets now, given everything that we have heard. As a result of the universal credit cut, something like 4,000 children in Scotland might no longer qualify for the Scottish child payment. Can you think of any mechanism that we could use so that those 4,000 children retain their eligibility and can continue to access the Scottish child payment?
In the same vein, is there anything else that we can do with the social security powers in Scotland to improve the incomes of families across Scotland?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 16 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you for allowing me to come back in, convener.
The answers were really helpful. I have two brief follow-up questions. First, would doubling the child payment as soon as possible—as in, now—and again next year have an impact on meeting the targets? Secondly, on the point about social housing, are we currently targeting such housing at the right families in Scotland?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 16 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you for coming along. What is the panel’s assessment of trends in child poverty in Scotland, the likelihood that we will meet the targets, and whether you think there is any way other than by using social security to meet the targets?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
A number of the actions that you have outlined are not necessarily in legislation. For example, the targets on accessible housing are not in legislation; they are a matter for discretion, and that reflects some of the inequalities that still exist for disabled people.
You have said that there are plans for a national transitions strategy. Can you set out why that would be a strategy and not a bill or a legislative right at this stage?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
It was clear from this morning’s evidence session that people think that a lot of the legislation in relation to the ban is devolved to Scotland. Is it the Scottish Government’s position that any ban in Scotland would include gender as well as sexual orientation? In addition, would the ban include advertising, and not include exemptions in the case of consent?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
If that is okay, convener. I thank Fulton MacGregor for allowing me in.
Last week, I met representatives of an organisation called Tell MAMA—“MAMA” stands for measuring anti-Muslim attacks—who talked about the increase in hate crime that people from ethnic minorities have experienced. One of their concerns is that such crime is being experienced more in a home setting, from neighbours and people in their local community. That has a particular impact on the way in which we use our hate crime legislation. Do you have any plans to look at that issue? Do you plan to work with housing associations, for example, to look at how we could start to address some of those concerns?