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 1225 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 October 2025
Karen Adam
Good morning, and welcome to the 23rd meeting in 2025 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have received no apologies.
Under agenda item 1, do members agree to take in private item 4, which is consideration of our work programme?
Members indicated agreement.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 October 2025
Karen Adam
Before we move on to part 2 of the bill, I ask whether members are content that they have asked everything that they wish to ask on part 1. Members can always come in at the end, but I want to ensure that we have finished with questions on part 1 and that we make a distinction in moving on to part 2.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 October 2025
Karen Adam
Cabinet secretary, some witnesses have suggested that part 2 of the bill is so distinct and different from part 1 that it should not be in the bill. What are your views on that?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 October 2025
Karen Adam
We will now have questions from Pam Gosal.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 October 2025
Karen Adam
If members are content that they have asked everything that they wish to, that concludes our questions. I thank the cabinet secretary for joining us this morning.
That brings the public part of our meeting to a conclusion. We will now move into private session to consider the remaining items on our agenda.
11:18 Meeting continued in private until 11:53.Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 October 2025
Karen Adam
As you said in your opening statement, we have heard from a wide range of witnesses in the past few weeks. For various reasons, they have been quite critical of the bill. What is your response to that? Can you give those witnesses any assurances that the bill, in its current form, is necessary?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 October 2025
Karen Adam
We now go back to questions from Paul McLennan.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 October 2025
Karen Adam
Under item 2, the committee will hold its final evidence session on the Children (Withdrawal from Religious Education and Amendment of UNCRC Compatibility Duty) (Scotland) Bill. I welcome Jenny Gilruth, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills. She is accompanied by Lewis Hedge, deputy director of the curriculum and qualifications division; Joe Smith, children’s rights reporting and monitoring team leader; Denise McKay, deputy director of children, education, rights incorporation and disclosure in the Scottish Government legal directorate; and Sarah Booth, a lawyer from the Scottish Government legal directorate.
You are all very welcome, and I thank you for joining us. I invite the cabinet secretary to give a brief opening statement before we move to questions.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
Good morning, and welcome to the 22nd meeting in 2025 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have received apologies from Pam Gosal, and Marie McNair will join us online. Our first agenda item is a decision on whether to take item 4 in private. Do we agree to do so?
Members indicated agreement.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
Our next agenda item is taking evidence on the Children (Withdrawal from Religious Education and Amendment of UNCRC Compatibility Duty) (Scotland) Bill. This is our second evidence session on the bill, and this morning we will hear from two panels of witnesses.
I welcome our first panel. We are joined in the room by: Juliet Harris, director, Together (Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights); Gina Wilson, head of strategy, Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland; and Gavin Yates, executive director, Connect. We are joined remotely by Louise Church, who is the Scottish Youth Parliament’s member for Galloway and West Dumfries and also a member of its education and lifelong learning committee.
We turn to questions from members. I ask our witnesses to indicate to me when they would like to come in to respond to a member’s question or to any of the points that are raised. Louise Church, if you wish to come in, please type R in the chat function and the clerks will bring that to my attention.
I will kick us off. Last week, the committee heard from three panels of witnesses. They were all quite critical of the bill in various ways, and they were not supportive of it. What are your thoughts on the general principles of the bill?
