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 787 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
You have already written to the organisations that might be involved, then they will—
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
Yes—organisations that will give input through the consultation.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
That is welcome, particularly bearing in mind that we had a whole session on the public sector equality duty and all nine protected characteristics.
You have talked about the protected characteristic of sex. Following the Supreme Court judgment on the definition of “woman”, how will the Scottish Government actively prioritise the sex-based rights of women in upcoming policy reviews?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
It is almost as though a line has been drawn. You talk about Elect Her and Engender, and they are very good organisations, but they focus on gender, not biological sex. I suppose that matters, because my next question is about funding.
On rights-based budgeting, I wrote to you about how the Scottish Government funds and supports third sector and activist organisations in the regard that I have just mentioned, but I am still waiting for a response. Maybe I can resend that letter to you in light of the judgment, and you can now write to me. I would appreciate that.
In that correspondence, I talk about millions of pounds. There are all these figures. A recent one was £500 million. Huge amounts of money have been spent by the SNP Government on a gender self-identification echo chamber. I have used that term: it is an echo chamber with the likes of the Equality Network, Stonewall and LGBT Youth Scotland. There is, however, evidence that women’s groups advocating for sex-based rights feel that they have been marginalised and they feel maligned. Moving forward, I think it is important to recognise that, particularly when you are looking at funding. If you are only funding those organisations that agree with your view, there is a huge issue with that.
My colleague Pam Gosal talked about costly litigation, and we cannot talk about specific cases, but if the Scottish Government does not move at pace, there will be litigation for the NHS, hospitals, schools and leisure centres across the board.
I think that, right now, the public sector feels that it is having to scramble to unravel something. Will the SNP Government and the minister finally accept that rights-based budgeting does not just mean funding the groups that agree with you?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
My earlier set of questions explored you listening and hearing when incorporating policies. My next question is about rights-based budgeting but, before I ask that, I want to go back to something that you said in relation to a question from my colleague Pam Gosal.
You talked about gender quotas and you mentioned Elect Her and Engender. You are conflating sex and gender. The public sector equality duty has nine protected characteristics, one of which is sex and one of which is gender reassignment. When you review policies, it is important to differentiate between sex and gender. From this session and you saying that you are hearing what people are saying, I hope that you are mindful that when you say gender, do you mean gender or do you mean sex?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
Minister, I accept that funding help desks and suicide prevention is very important. However, if you find out that the groups that you are funding are giving misinformation through guidance, will you commit to stopping their funding if you have the evidence in front of you?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
I just want to check my understanding. We are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. You are saying that if people have evidence that guidance is incorrect and against the law, they need to go to the EHRC to complain, not to the Scottish Government. You will then wait for guidance or direction from the EHRC, rather than taking a view on the funding yourself. The filter is with the EHRC and it is not with you.
11:00Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
Will you give us an idea of the timescale for that? Is it in the next couple of months?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
How will you make sure that all the right organisations are involved in reviewing that, particularly in the light of the Supreme Court judgment?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Tess White
Do you have any idea on the timing of that?