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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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 1311 contributions
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Jeremy Balfour
We would like to keep the victim/survivor in their permanent home, rather than their having to move out. In your experience, how realistic is that, and what needs to happen to make it more realistic?
I do not know who wants to jump in there. Lyndsay, I will pick on you.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you. It would be helpful if you could provide that. Lyndsay Clelland, do you have anything to add?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Jeremy Balfour
That is helpful. To what extent are discretionary housing payments a useful fund to assist those leaving an abusive partner? Do they work in practice?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you both for coming. How effective is the Scottish welfare fund as emergency funding for people who are experiencing domestic abuse, and what are your views on the new guidance?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you. That is very helpful.
To move on to the issue of housing, what are the implications for victims/survivors of the current availability and cost of housing and refuge places, and what needs to change?
09:30Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning. Before I move on to another area, I want to go back to Jenn Glinski on the child maintenance service issue. I am interested to know whether the issue is structural due to the way that it was set up or whether it relates to the legislation that was passed to bring it in. Can procedures be changed or are the issues that your clients face more structural?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Lee, do you want to comment from a local authority perspective?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Stuart, do you have anything to add?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I will have one more bite of the cherry and push a wee bit further. Despite the issues that have been raised by different parties on the complexity of the new rules on giving notice, will the rules work quite well in practice, once they get going and everyone is used to them?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I will pick up on your final point. You said at the very start, and it is obvious, that the law is complex at the moment, and part of the aim of the bill is to try to simplify the law for practitioners and for tenants and small businesses, but I think that section 4 and section 5 leave some ambiguity. You just said that you do not think that those provisions could be drafted any more clearly. Will you explain why?