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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 1176 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Karen Adam
We will move to questions from Tess White.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Karen Adam
Sara Cowan would like to come in.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Karen Adam
We move to questions from Marie McNair, please.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Karen Adam
Thank you very much. That brings our evidence taking from our first panel to a conclusion, and I thank everybody for their participation this morning.
We will suspend briefly for a changeover of witnesses.
10:32 Meeting suspended.Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Karen Adam
I welcome our second panel of witnesses, who are Shona Robison, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, and Kaukab Stewart, the Minister for Equalities, along with Scottish Government officials Rob Priestley, who is head of the mainstreaming unit, and Alasdair Black, who is deputy director for budget and fiscal co-ordination.
I invite the minister and the cabinet secretary to make short opening statements.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Karen Adam
Our second agenda item is pre-budget scrutiny. This is the third and final year of the committee’s agreed focus on human rights budgeting and the final budget for session 6. Accordingly, the focus will be on accountability and on consolidating the committee’s scrutiny throughout the session. That follows on from the committee exploring participation in 2023, as part of our scrutiny of the budget for 2024-25, and transparency in 2024, as part of our pre-budget scrutiny for 2025-26.
Although this is our first public pre-budget scrutiny session this year, the committee has held informal sessions. Last week, we heard from the Commission Advocating Rights for Minorities and the committee will today draw heavily on what we heard last week from the commission.
Today, we will hear from key stakeholders the committee has worked with throughout the session, before hearing from the Minister for Equalities and from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government.
The first part of the meeting will follow a round-table format. I welcome Professor Angela O’Hagan, chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission; Emma Congreve, interim chair of the equality and human rights budget advisory group and deputy director and principal knowledge exchange fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute; Sara Cowan, director of the Scottish Women’s Budget Group; and Allan Faulds, senior policy officer at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland. I thank them all for coming today.
I will begin our conversation by inviting everyone to briefly introduce themselves. I will begin. I am the member for Banffshire and Buchan Coast and the convener of the committee. We will go anticlockwise round the table.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Karen Adam
Thank you, that was very helpful.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Karen Adam
I remind witnesses and members that we are running a bit over time. We still have a question from Pam Gosal, and Tess White has indicated that she wants to ask a question. If any other members wish to ask any more questions, they should indicate that to me. I ask everyone to make it as a succinct as possible so that we do not go too far over time. I would appreciate that.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Karen Adam
As no other members wish to come in, that concludes the first part of this morning’s evidence session. We will suspend briefly for a changeover of Government officials.
10:21 Meeting suspended.Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Karen Adam
Thank you for updating us on when we can expect the sets of regulations. On when the two sets of regulations will take effect, are the lead-in times that were stated in the March letter—12 months and 18 months respectively—still correct?