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 1217 contributions
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?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
I welcome our second panel of witnesses. Dr Douglas Hutchison is executive director of education at Glasgow City Council and is representing the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, and Susan Quinn is the convener of the education committee at the Educational Institute of Scotland. Good morning and welcome to you. We will move straight to questions, and I will kick off.
We heard critical feedback from the three panels of witnesses last week, and we heard various critical views about the bill from this morning’s first panel. What are your views on the general principles of the bill?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
We have questions from Marie McNair, who is joining us remotely.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
That concludes our questions. Thank you once again for joining us. We will discuss the remaining items on our agenda in private.
11:32 Meeting continued in private until 12:23.Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
We will move to questions from Maggie Chapman.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
That brings our first session to a close. I thank all our witnesses for attending.
I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow a changeover of witnesses.
10:41 Meeting suspended.
10:45 On resuming—
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
We are going to move on to discuss part 2 of the bill. However, before we do that, what is your opinion on the fact that part of the bill amends the Education Act 1980, which is a UK act, and it will not be possible to challenge a breach of the amendments under the 2024 act, as the bill only covers acts of the Scottish Parliament? What is your view on whether part 1 of the bill achieves its objective of complying with the UNCRC, as well as providing coherence and clarity of the process for withdrawal from religious observance and religious and moral education? Do you have any further thoughts on that approach?
10:15Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Karen Adam
I appreciate the dry and technical nature of the points that the witnesses have made today, but it is important that we get them on the record. I say to Gina Wilson that, if she wants to send us the amendments that she referred to, we would appreciate it, as it would allow us to understand where those views are coming from. We have a fantastic team at the Scottish Parliament that supports MSPs in understanding any legalese and helping us to make headway on these things.
We now have questions from Marie McNair, who joins us remotely.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Karen Adam
Before I bring in Maggie Chapman, Rhoda Grant would like to ask a supplementary question.