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 3405 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
That is a shame. I suppose that you will not be able to do that after the disposal of assets.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
I understand that. You always say that people should come with solutions and options, and all I am suggesting is that you look at our Official Report from that day.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
We have a £4.5 million pressure this year. How will that be accommodated in the funding?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
I am sorry. How will that be managed in recurring years?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
It will be interesting to see how that develops. I have a wee line of people. Ross Greer is next.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
My final question is a bit out there.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
Yes. We will look forward to receiving some information on that.
Thank you very much for coming this morning, minister. It was great. You will get a letter from us in due course. I thank you for your commitments to provide us with more evidence.
That concludes the public part of our meeting.
11:23 Meeting continued in private until 11:53.Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
Fornethy house survivors say that they are shocked, disgusted and angry. The unanimous view of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee was that the Fornethy survivors should be included in the scheme.
On 12 January 2023, the then Deputy First Minister John Swinney told my committee:
“I do not believe that, as things stand, there is an inherent impediment to applications to the redress scheme coming forward from people who spent time at Fornethy ... To put it slightly more bluntly, I reject the idea that the scheme is not for Fornethy survivors; I think that it is possible for Fornethy survivors to be successful in applying under the scheme.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 12 January 2023; c 14.]
What has changed? What will the Deputy First Minister say to the women—who are now starting a billboard campaign in their fight for compensation—when she meets them next week?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it decided that survivors of abuse at Fornethy house should not be eligible to access Scotland’s redress scheme. (S6O-03659)
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Sue Webber
I promise that I will not go on all night.
RIA Scotland supports the campaign for a new station at Winchburgh. I was not there—funnily enough—but I have heard that, at an SNP conference fringe meeting, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, in whose constituency the development lies, said that the station is a rather good idea. With her support and that of every other party in Parliament, who else do we need to persuade to make it happen?
We do not have the luxury of time in West Lothian. If we do not start to make a new station in the next 24 months, we will lose the space that has been ring fenced for the station and car park, as the demand to build more houses will mean that the land is needed for homes. We will find a few more property owners who have zero transport integration beyond an increasingly busy new road junction.
I commend Winchburgh Developments for its commitment and substantial contribution to making the vision a reality. Its involvement is testament to the power of community and corporate collaboration in driving forward public projects. It is now time for the Scottish Government to match that. A new station at Winchburgh is essential. It is not only a necessity to alleviate mounting congestion in our capital but a critical factor in meeting the Scottish Government’s failing net zero ambitions.
17:42