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 1602 contributions
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Excellent. Thank you.
I will ask some very closed questions—that shows my questioning training. I will look at the role of conveners. There is an exciting question coming, which will be the third one, but the first one is this: how do your parties choose your convener nominations?
Ash, I come to you first, because, in a sense, you are in a unique position, so you have the opportunity to say how parties should choose their conveners, and then I will come to the other members.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Okay. Ross?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Okay. Karen?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
So, in essence, the architecture is defining who can sit on a committee for your party rather than—
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Rhoda, what is the most important committee for Scottish Labour?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
But in relation to having been elected, would that give—
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
Thank you. I will throw you to the mercy of Annie Wells now.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
I understand that your party absolutely supports lived experience voices being heard at committees.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
One of the challenges concerns the use of d’Hondt—to use the shorthand—and the available pool that is left. Is there anything that the Government can—or, indeed, should—do, in reflecting on some of its decisions, to facilitate an easier achievement of that balance? I genuinely think that we all agree that such a balance would produce a far better vehicle at committee level, for scrutiny and things like that, and at chamber level, to do other things. Is there a responsibility on the Government to face really hard questions in order to allow others to achieve what the Scottish people want and what the gender-sensitive audit has suggested?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Martin Whitfield
There is nothing to apologise for. I am very conscious that you are here as representatives of your parties and that is the angle on which we are seeking input.