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 1648 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
That is helpful. Minister, as you were speaking, I was thinking about the relationship between criminal processes and civil processes. Other legislation is going through the Parliament at the moment that involves discussions that relate to, if they do not directly speak to, how civil and criminal courts might be able to work together. Can you say a bit more about that? With the Criminal Justice Modernisation and Abusive Domestic Behaviour Reviews (Scotland) Bill and the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, there is an opportunity for us to ensure that we get this right. I suppose that I just want some reassurance that, as you work through implementation of part 2 of the 2021 act, you will have your eyes on what is going on elsewhere.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Yes.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
The committee has just completed an inquiry into legal aid provision. One challenge that was raised was about the ability of victims/survivors to access legal aid. Were conversations happening at the time about what was available, given concerns about geographic variations?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Okay. I am not sure who wants to take my next question. Given the consultation that is to come and what we know about other structures that need to connect to the process, such as legal aid provision and the training and support that people who are to take evidence from children will need, what lessons can we learn in order to ensure that we are not back here in another year or two, having asked for and got more information and made promises to people, but still unable to deliver DAPOs?
10:15Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
To clarify, are you talking about the costs involved in implementation for all the partner agencies such as the courts and the police?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Good morning, minister. Thank you for being here. I will dig a little bit deeper into what you have said.
You talked about the legal and technical changes, including sorting out different procedures, and about the distinct IT systems of the criminal and civil courts. How many of those challenges were discussed or excavated at earlier stages, prior to the passage of the act and its achieving royal assent? It seems that some of those challenges should have been obvious. What work was done to understand the scope of the challenges and how they would be dealt with? Why is it that we are dealing with working groups only now?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
That is helpful. My final point is that training and awareness raising cannot be a one-off event; it has to be an on-going process, and the training has to be embedded in the professional training that different professionals go through鈥攖hat might even involve accreditation. We probably all need to bear in mind that it cannot be a one-off event. The act鈥檚 provisions might be implemented, but on-going training is really important.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
I have heard quite clearly about the work that is going on, particularly work on the statutory guidance and the cross-agency work, which pulls people in from a range of organisations, agencies and beyond.
Maybe I missed this point, but, given the engagement around children鈥檚 rights鈥攖he United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is still a very new and live thing鈥攚hat involvement has the Children and Young People鈥檚 Commissioner and her office had in the discussions? I want to hear reassurance that we are not reinventing the wheel. If good conversations are happening already, can we learn from them so that we do not replicate things, and so speed up implementation?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Good morning. Thank you for joining us today.
I want to pick up on some of the things that you have been talking about. Professor Kusters, in response to Tess White鈥檚 questions, you talked about resourcing and the disparity between the number of people who are BSL users and the number of people who speak Gaelic, and the funding that follows. Or than just hoping for more money, are there ways that the resources that are available could be used more effectively? I think that there are challenges. We have heard about education and the lack of understanding of the culture of BSL. How do we do better with the resources that we have?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Thanks, Stacey. That is helpful.
My final question is for Dr Adam and Professor Kusters. It seems that, as we have been talking this morning, questions have been arising for us about what goes into national and local plans and the watering down of the second national plan as compared to the first. It also seems to me that what is in the national plan does not necessarily get at the things that Dr Adam was talking about, such as training more BSL users to be counsellors, teachers, educators鈥攁 whole range of people in communities鈥攁nd not just interpreters or translators. Are there ways that we can join things up a bit better and close that gap?
Although there are questions, clearly, about measurement and accountability with regard to the plans, there is something missing if all we are doing is measuring the numbers of interpreters. That does not change the numbers of people who have BSL as a first language who are teachers or nurses, or who are doing other things in society, not just doing things specifically as BSL users, interpreters and translators.