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: 7 May 2024
Willie Coffey
Could you give us a wee example of that? Are developers saying, “Yes, we can comply with this overarching requirement, but we need extra resource and funding”? What exactly are they saying?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Willie Coffey
I do not think that there any more comments on 20-minute neighbourhoods and how they are shaping developers’ proposals, so thanks very much for your comments. I know that colleagues will want to come back in on some of these areas.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Willie Coffey
Do Tony Cain and Donna Young want to comment on 20-minute neighbourhoods? Are we embracing the concept fully or partially?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 May 2024
Willie Coffey
Thank you.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 2 May 2024
Willie Coffey
Good morning, everybody. Allister, the statistics that you read out are encouraging, but I want to put to you a point that David Jones, GEOAmey’s managing director, made when he appeared before us. He talked about the increased obligation on GEOAmey. He said, for example, that it had to deal with 44 per cent more solemn cases, 35 per cent more bed watches and 38 per cent higher costs, and that 60 per cent more people were involved in hospital appointments than was the case prior to the pandemic.
As I understand it, those increases in the numbers and in the demands that were placed on GEOAmey were never specified in the contract, but we still imposed penalties on GEOAmey for not meeting those increased obligations and higher targets. Was it fair to not specify increased targets and, at the same, to penalise the company for not meeting them?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 2 May 2024
Willie Coffey
Why would penalties be enforced at all if such flexibility was built into the agreement?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 2 May 2024
Willie Coffey
In summary, there is a direct correlation between performance improvements and the number of staff who are available to implement those improvements. I needed to put that point to you, because Mr Jones made it to us.
I turn to the point that my colleague Graham Simpson asked about—the fact that seven prisons are at red status. Are they at red status because of the numbers? Are the numbers in a prison the main driver for that, or is it to do with conditions or capacity?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 2 May 2024
Willie Coffey
It sounds as though you need to take a range of actions to bring those seven prisons back from the brink—back from red status. Do you have the flexibility, the freedom of resource and so on to bring those prisons back from that red status?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 2 May 2024
Willie Coffey
I will ask Neil Rennick about that directly. What is the Scottish Government doing to address that and to pull those seven prisons back from red status? I am glad to hear that Kilmarnock prison is not one of them, by the way.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 2 May 2024
Willie Coffey
Can I pin you down and ask, on behalf of the public, when you anticipate the seven prisons being pushed back from red status?