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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 1811 contributions
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
That is helpful.
The letter to the committee states:
“No issues appear to have arisen as a consequence of the temporary relaxation of the rules”.
However, we do not actually know what the situation is.
There seems to be an inclination towards an agreement that we should request the Parliamentary Bureau to give its view, and perhaps we could request the clerks to look into how frequently substitutes have been used during the period. That would put us in a better position to make suggestions.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
Item 2 is consideration of the rules that relate to committee substitutes, which were varied in the period from the beginning of the pandemic until the dissolution of Parliament at the end of session 5. The purpose of that was to provide more flexibility if committee members were unable to attend committee meetings and to ensure that committee work was not adversely affected by the pandemic.
The chair of the Conveners Group has written to the committee following a discussion on committee substitutes. In his letter, he has suggested that the committee might wish to consider having two named substitutes rather than one. The current situation regarding substitutes is covered in rule 12.2.A of the standing orders, which is on “Participation by substitutes”. It says:
“Where a committee member—
(a) is unavailable for a committee meeting (or any committee activity taking place other than at a meeting) because of illness, family circumstances, adverse travel conditions beyond the member’s control, a requirement to attend to other Parliamentary business or urgent constituency business”,
a substitute member may participate in their place.
I invite comments from members.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
Thank you. That is helpful. Would Sue Webber like to comment?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the ninth meeting in 2022 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I remind members who are participating virtually to type R in the chat function on BlueJeans if they would like to come in on any issue.
Under agenda item 1, the committee is invited to take items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Item 3 is for the committee to consider its next steps in relation to its inquiry into future parliamentary procedures and practices; item 4 is for the committee to consider draft code of conduct rule changes; and item 5 is for members to consider draft correspondence. Do members agree to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
That was not in any way set up—much. [Laughter.]
Thank you for attending, Paul. The committee will consider whether to approve the application for recognition under agenda item 3, and the clerks will inform you in due course of the committee’s decision.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
I like your comment on busting myths. The record notes your potential interest in the CPG.
Are members agreed to accord recognition to the proposed cross-party group on care leavers?
Members indicated agreement.
09:08 Meeting continued in private until 09:54.Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
Agenda item 3 is, indeed, a decision on whether we wish to afford recognition to the proposed cross-party group on care leavers. Do committee member have any comments, questions or views on that?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the eighth meeting of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee in 2022. I remind members who are joining us virtually to place an R in the chat function of BlueJeans if they would like to come in on any issues.
Agenda item 1 is a decision on whether the committee will take agenda item 4 in private. Item 4 is the consideration of some correspondence. Do members agree to take item 4 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
Thank you, Paul. I note that one of the organisations that signed up to the CPG is STAF—the Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum. It was lovely to see its display in the Parliament’s garden lobby and to see its members meeting ˿ to discuss it.
Do committee members have any specific questions on the proposed group?
Did it surprise you, Paul, that this was the first time that a care leavers group was being proposed?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Martin Whitfield
You make an interesting comment, Bob, because this committee has heard, in relation to a number of different matters, about the challenge of committees being able to hear evidence, particularly from witnesses with lived experience. Whether or not this proposed CPG goes forward, maybe there will be an opportunity to look at the resource that exists in some of our CPGs when we are looking to take evidence across committees.