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 2341 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Willie Coffey
East Ayrshire Council said that it is more important to build the types of housing that the local community and population need, rather than hit a numerical target of 110,000 houses across Scotland. Does that ultimately lead us to a place where we will perhaps end up not hitting that target but focusing on local needs instead?
East Ayrshire also noted the difficulty in replacing and building some of the larger properties that were lost during the right-to-buy years. Such properties are more expensive to build, which would impact on the ability to deliver on a numerical target. Is that concern shared by other authorities across Scotland? That question is for both Gary Fairley and Mike Callaghan.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Willie Coffey
My question is on the point that Miles Briggs raised about the use of things such as pension funds and real estate investment funds to lever in money. Is there a risk that, as my colleagues in East Ayrshire Council have said, the issues that follow on from the use of that funding model—guaranteed rates of return, indexing and so on—will translate across to the rent that might be demanded of tenants, and rents might require to be indexed?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Willie Coffey
East Ayrshire Council also commented on grant levels. Aaron Hill mentioned the flexibility that the Scottish Government has already shown. If a council provides sufficient evidence, hopefully a grant is made, and the funding can be made available. However, East Ayrshire Council said that the process works on a site-by-site or project basis. Is there an issue there, such that we need to improve the process and make it a bit more seamless?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Willie Coffey
I have a final query for our COSLA colleagues, if they are still online. It is reported that the UK Government might be thinking about bringing back the right to buy for housing association homes. East Ayrshire Council made a specific response to that point, saying that it could make the situation worse, especially in the current climate. Do our friends and colleagues from COSLA share that view?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Willie Coffey
Thank you. I will hand back to other colleagues.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 6 September 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, everyone. I will pick on Mike Callaghan and Gary Fairley from COSLA to ask whether issues that East Ayrshire Council—my council—raised in its submission are shared by councils across Scotland.
One of the big messages in East Ayrshire Council’s submission is about the decision whether
“to invest in existing stock”
or in “new build”. It is clear that many councils will have to face that choice. East Ayrshire said that it is “untenable” for it to consider both strategies without an on-going assessment of the impact of borrowing and all the factors that colleagues around the table have mentioned so far. As COSLA representatives and spokespersons, do you share the view that it is in effect untenable for councils to do both?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Morag McNeill, I hope to get into this issue about quality and the statement in CMAL’s submission that says quite clearly:
“CMAL consider that the primary cause of the Vessels’ delay and associated cost overrun is a catastrophic contractor failure between October 2015 and August 2019.”
We were beginning to get into that territory during Colin Beattie’s questioning. Could you explain to the committee why you are using such strong words, and could you offer the committee a few examples to justify those comments?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Are all of those commentary about the failure to apply standards?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Willie Coffey
I have one last comment on this area. The information that we have is that, in April this year, there were still about 211 observation reports outstanding. Is that normal practice, or does that tell us that there is a bigger issue?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Thank you very much for your answers.