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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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 760 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Could I ask one more quick question please, convener?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Do you want to comment, Gerry?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Thanks, convener, and thank you for that answer, Sean. Scottish councils have failed to recruit workers for one in four jobs overall, and we have heard from all three witnesses that underfunding is the biggest challenge that local government is facing. Funding is being cut to the bone and that is leading to cutbacks in service provision as well as strikes over pay and conditions. It is obviously becoming increasingly difficult to make those jobs look attractive. Are they more unattractive, especially in relation to job security, to people who are looking for jobs? What impact is that having on skills shortages and on local government鈥檚 ability to deliver on its priorities?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Does Johanna Baxter want to respond?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
I am quite happy to ask this next question to the director of councils, if that is okay鈥攐r do you want me to ask it here?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Okay. I was just saying that because of time. No worries.
In the past, the committee has heard about the disproportionate impact that the overall reduction in local authority personnel has had on council departments, particularly in planning and building standards. Upcoming legislation proposed by the SNP-Green Government, including the new build heat standard and the short-term lets licensing scheme, will undoubtedly lead to an influx of applications to such departments. Are the relevant departments adequately staffed and resourced to deal with an increase in workload without there being any adverse impact on other stakeholders?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Thank you. I was going to ask about building warrants. Do you anticipate the council having any other involvement with those regulations? We have spoken about planning and building warrants. Will councils be expected to do more of anything else, or to do it differently?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
I will touch on what Fionna Kell said about the significant impact on the supply of homes.
We have a housing emergency and the Scottish Government is failing to meet its target of building 50,000 affordable homes. It is also estimated that only 500 heat installers operate in Scotland. That compares with 8,700 registered engineers who are qualified to work on boilers. Are you concerned about鈥攜ou touched on this鈥攖he impact of the regulations on new builds, especially affordable homes?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Good morning. I am a Conservative MSP for the West Scotland region and a committee member.
Ariane, I have declarations to make. Should I do so later on?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
This is my other question, convener. Minister, you have just spoken about planning permission. Obviously, local authorities are under a lot of pressure. What impact do you anticipate that this workload will bring to bear on councils? Has an impact assessment been done on that workload? If councils are unable to keep up with the applications, what impact will that have on the implementation of the policy and, more broadly, on house building?