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 1537 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 March 2025
Katy Clark
Lack of maintenance has been an issue in many areas. Indeed, some of us are very aware of the situation at Ardrossan harbour, where the failure to maintain the port is having devastating economic consequences.
The proposed conservancy fee represents just one of a number of decisions being taken by this multinational that I put to the Scottish Government are not in the public interest. I am pleased to support the motion and, on this particular issue, I call on the Scottish Government to take direct and immediate action to intervene and urge Peel Ports to scrap its plans for implementing the fee.
17:40Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Katy Clark
I congratulate Michael Matheson on securing this important debate, because no issue is more serious than the safety of children; their wellbeing and life chances must be paramount when we make decisions in the chamber that affect their lives. I also thank Professor Jay and Action for Children staff for all the research and hard work that they have done to bring to light the facts surrounding the criminal exploitation of children. Their work is hugely important.
We should be under no illusions: as Michael Matheson has said, the criminal exploitation of children is a form of child abuse. For adults to force children to commit crimes and take advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, control, manipulate or deceive a child into criminal activity is abhorrent. Violence, concealing contraband such as drugs and weapons, giving false alibis, committing theft, begging in the streets or vandalising properties are just snapshots of some of the criminal acts that children in Scotland are being forced to undertake. We must do all that we can to protect them from that.
The charity Action for Children has told us that nowhere in the UK, including in Scotland, do we have a legal definition of what the criminal exploitation of children consists of—that point was made by Bill Kidd. The charity has told us that that matters, because of the lack of a shared understanding of criminal exploitation of children. That prevents co-ordinated, joined-up responses to such exploitation, particularly with regard to what happens in the early stages, when children are groomed for child criminal exploitation. The Scottish Government must bring forward a legal definition to ensure that people who are committing those acts of abuse are brought to justice. I noted what Michael Matheson said about the potential of extending aspects of legislation from down south.
We know that Scotland is failing when it comes to keeping the Promise to some of the most vulnerable children in our care. I know the commitments that the Scottish Government has made, but we are not close to keeping the Promise commitment by the deadline of 2030. That will lead to the criminal exploitation of many more children, who might be in care and who will have much poorer life chances and health outcomes, and it will cause many of those children significant trauma that might have lifelong consequences for them and, indeed, their families and future generations.
The Scottish Government must do more to protect children from criminal gangs or individuals who use children to commit criminal acts. We know that the exploitation of children in Scotland is increasing, and we must do more to ensure that no child is abused in that way in the future.
13:09Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Katy Clark
Can we have an indication from the cabinet secretary of her thinking with regard to the timescales for any proposals being brought forward by the Scottish Government? Is that likely to happen before the 2026 elections?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Katy Clark
One of the considerations is the view of the Parole Board of Scotland, as it will have a great deal of knowledge of the operational aspects of the amendments. Have you been able to ascertain views beyond those of the organisations and individuals that you mentioned?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Katy Clark
I, too, am sympathetic to Jamie Greene’s amendments and what he has been trying to do. I appreciate that he has already put a huge amount of work into these matters in his member’s bill, whereas the committee has had no opportunity whatever to scrutinise them in any detail. As Pauline McNeill said, these matters were not in the bill as it was introduced by the Government; therefore, they were not considered by the committee as part of our stage 1 proceedings.
Campaigners are doing a huge amount of work and have met the cabinet secretary and the First Minister, and it may be some time before we have another opportunity to consider these matters. It is unlikely that there will be another bill in this session of Parliament that could take these issues forward; therefore, I urge the cabinet secretary to engage constructively with the issue to see whether it is possible to lodge amendments to this bill.
We need to have appropriate scrutiny mechanisms—that is something that the committee must consider. I want to ensure that the committee has the full opportunity to properly scrutinise any amendments that are lodged, whether they are from Jamie Greene or from the Scottish Government, because these are important matters that we need to get right. Many other countries give victims rights of this nature. However, we have a specific legal system in Scotland and we need to ensure that the bill works, which is difficult to do without the information that has been highlighted this morning.
I appreciate the work that Jamie Greene is doing, and I hope that it is possible, at the end of the day, for us to come up with amendments that can be supported by the Parliament.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Katy Clark
I have listened carefully to what Jamie Greene said, but I think that we would want to know the position of the Parole Board and the Risk Management Authority, and get a lot more information before we enacted any of his amendments.
On Sharon Dowey’s amendments, it would be interesting to hear what she thinks the status would be of the summary of reasons that she is proposing. For example, could it be challenged? It would also bring another document and another set of reasons into the process. It would be useful to get more information on how that would be treated and its status, given the complex nature of the decisions made by the Risk Management Authority on risk. I do not know whether that is something that Sharon Dowey could come back on now or whether she could do so before stage 3.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Katy Clark
I, too, am very grateful to the members for their work and for bringing these issues to the committee. It would be helpful to have a better understanding of the differences between the approaches. Under Maggie Chapman’s proposal, making a non-harassment order is not mandatory, including in situations in which the victim does not want a non-harassment order for some reason—there are reasons why some victims would not want a non-harassment order. I am more sympathetic towards that approach.
However, I noticed that Maggie Chapman supports Sharon Dowey’s amendment 241. It would be helpful to know whether Sharon Dowey’s amendment would also mean that there would be situations in which a court would not make a non-harassment order because of the specific circumstances of a case. We would always want the court to have discretion, given that it would be fully aware of all the facts.
The point that was made about the low usage of non-harassment orders is powerful.
The point that was made about the low usage of non-harassment orders is powerful. This is an attempt to shift the onus so that there is a presumption that, in most situations, it is appropriate that the offender should not approach the victim, particularly when there have been bail conditions. It would seem to be appropriate in those situations to continue an order of the court so that there is no contact, as long as there is the provision that representations can be made when that is not appropriate.
I am sympathetic to what the members are trying to do, but we need to get the detail right. I look forward to hearing what the cabinet secretary has to say.
09:45Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Katy Clark
Will the member take an intervention?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Katy Clark
It is similar to the intervention that I made earlier. Have you had discussions with the Risk Management Authority about how orders for lifelong restriction are dealt with?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Katy Clark
Will Bob Doris give way?