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 2341 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Willie Coffey
On that point, who will ultimately certify that a new-build house is compliant with all the standards? Will it be the compliance plan manager, a clerk of works or the person who issues the building warrant? Who is going to look at the fabric and construction of the new build to say whether they meet all the standards for fire safety and other regulations that apply to the construction process? Who will sign on the dotted line to say that the building is compliant?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, everybody. We have gone straight into the deep end. I was going to lead on questions about costs, but people have got there well before me.
I want to tease out the possible ways through this. Does the solution lie in looking at the subsidy benchmarks? Do we have to increase those again? Is anything being done to enhance the local supply chain network? It was mentioned that the costs of materials are going through the roof. I do not know whether most of the materials are being brought into the rural community or, indeed, into Scotland. Is work being done on that? Is there a role for private developers’ contributions to be changed to try to assist with that? Is there any evidence yet that some of the projects are at risk of not going ahead or being delayed because of those escalating unit costs?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Willie Coffey
That would be very welcome. Thank you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Does anyone else want to come in?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Can we begin to solve the issue through local supply chains, or are we completely reliant on imported timber for house frame construction? Can we solve it?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, everybody. On the cost issue, I was going to ask our local authority colleagues whether they are experiencing the same cost overruns that you appear to be experiencing. Are the unit prices that you have mentioned, which are significantly higher than we had before, coming about purely because of the cost of sourcing new materials to service the industry? I am glad that Colin Proctor is here because, hopefully, he can help us understand why costs are going through the roof. Are the costing models based on existing methods of delivery? We have heard about off-site construction, prefabrication, sourcing alternative materials and so on. Are we changing the model of construction or is it too early to tell whether such a move will be successful?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Is it too early to say anything about the possible impact of the various support schemes on your forecasts?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
I would be obliged if you could submit that to the committee.
11:00Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
The conversation earlier was fascinating. What I drew from it is that we can have any number of forecasts, but it is the outturn that matters. Alyson Stafford led the discussion about the arrangement being firmly embedded in the fiscal framework. I am sure that some people are asking about revisiting that if there is any scope to do so. Who knows? That might evolve in the future.
I want to ask a couple of questions about the impact of the pandemic on tax receipts. I also have a little question about the compliance issue that is mentioned in the report.
In a meeting earlier in the year, we heard that the forecasts for income tax receipts had increased significantly. Will you tell us a little about your estimation of the impact of Covid on your forecasts? Have those forecasts changed as the result of the impact of Covid? That is probably a question for Jonathan Athow and Alyson Stafford.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Have you been able to put any estimate on that at all?