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 2341 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Thank you. I would appreciate hearing Councillor Heddle’s view on that. What might make this more successful than the 2007 concordat?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Thanks for that. Councillor Heddle, COSLA has an increased role in national policy development. Does that suggest that people like the members of this committee should seek to scrutinise that aspect of your work more effectively to ensure that the outcomes of the framework agreement are being delivered, or are you satisfied that the current scrutiny models are sufficient?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Willie Coffey
I want to ask about two aspects of the 2015 act that have not yet been brought into force. As you know, the act came into force in 2015, so we are now eight years on, but I would just note part 7, which is intended to facilitate supporter engagement in football clubs, and part 10, which enables ministers to require public authorities to help the public to participate in the decision-making process. What are your views on those provisions? Will you be bringing them into force any time soon?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Many thanks.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Joe, you and I are the two members here today who were around at the time of the historic concordat in 2007. You will recall that that concordat was connected to the structures within the national performance framework. The new deal does not connect with the national performance framework, but you mentioned an outcomes framework. Can you give us some insight into how we will measure progress and outcomes this time?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Okay. Thank you for both those responses.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Thank you for that.
Auditor General, you also raised in the report issues relating to ownership, rights and obligations, which probably further complicate the whole mix. How much have those issues in the background impacted on the ability to produce and prepare accurate statements on the valuation of assets?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Is Scottish Canals making sufficient progress in the area to reconcile that? Is it making good progress or any progress towards that? Disentangling all that is really complex. Is that being done?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Willie Coffey
My final query is on the comment that you made earlier about errors in the accounting statements. I will read this bit so that I get the wording correct. The report states:
“the reconciliation of the reconstructed closing balances to the figures in the draft accounts identified several errors.â€
Will you just flesh out for us a wee bit what those errors are and what has been done to correct them?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Willie Coffey
What is the TB?