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 875 contributions
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Following on from some of the things that have just been said, I think that Dr Tickell, in particular, made the interesting point that the justification that is often given for this approach is the pace of change and, critically, the length of time that it takes to get legislation through the Parliament. As a parliamentarian, certainly in the Scottish Parliament, I would gently question that premise. That might be the case if we were dealing with stage 3s every day, or even every week, but ultimately, without using emergency procedures, a short bill can be passed in three or four months. It is not unheard of for a bill to be introduced in September and passed by Christmas time, depending on the length of it. Would witnesses agree with that insight?
I have no experience at Westminster, I am also interested to hear from panel members about whether the world is very different there. The ability have electronic voting here makes it easier to vote, for example. The more fundamental point is: should we be asking the Government to reconceive how it thinks about legislation? Should it be making shorter bills that are more focused? It might find that those are easier to get through. Essentially, the Government is seeking to avoid Parliament, but without necessarily having justification for doing so. Do you agree with those insights?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
The point that Dr Fox raised about the loss of the green paper to white paper procedure is important. Is the excuse that there is not the time valid in Westminster, or is that rationale just convenient for the party of government? Dr Govan, you are nodding.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
Dr Grez Hidalgo, was your proposal roughly along the same lines? Are there any other elements that you want to highlight?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That is also true of primary legislation. That is the argument that we constantly get from the Government when we lodge amendments to legislation. It says, “You don’t realise what you have done.” However, I take the broader point.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Meeting date: 7 January 2025
Daniel Johnson
That is noted.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 December 2024
Daniel Johnson
Unless Anne Murray or Malcolm Benny wants to raise anything, I will leave it there.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 December 2024
Daniel Johnson
The person from broadcasting is looking somewhat twitchy. I think that you might have a mobile device near the microphone that is causing a bit of buzz. That is much better—thank you. [Interruption.] Oh no—it is still there. Maybe it is me.
You said that the primary focus is on the business case requirements. Is the issue the fact that there is a significant number of requirements, or is it their inflexibility? Are the requirements relatively well articulated, or is it a more informal process of querying? Is the process burdensome but clear, or is it a burden because it is not clear? That is really what I am asking.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 December 2024
Daniel Johnson
I ask David McDowall and Rick O’Farrell whether there is anything that they want to add. I will not repeat the whole question.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 December 2024
Daniel Johnson
I also welcome our witnesses. Just to give you fair warning, given that there are a lot of us on the committee and a lot of you on the panel, whoever flinches first is who I will direct my question to, so I will be watching very intently how you react.
In broad terms, we are interested in how city region deals work in the broader policy context, how they have been constructed, how they are overseen and what effect they have. Given that you represent some of the more recent deals, I begin by asking you all to what degree you have benefited from the experience of the previous growth deals, and how that informed the way that your deal was constructed and put together. Anne Murray, you were nodding, so I am afraid I come to you first.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 December 2024
Daniel Johnson
I am quite interested in that. You mentioned benefits realisation and the PMO, which relate to the organisation of and mechanisms for the growth deals themselves. Is that primarily where the benefits were focused? I am also interested in how projects were identified and put together and how they fit together overall. Were the methodologies and processes for identifying projects shared?