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 358 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Roz McCall
First of all, thank you for all the evidence that you have given; it has been very detailed, and I appreciate it.
I will zoom back a bit, if that is okay. All three of you have been there from the start, with the vision, and have been involved right from its inception and all the way through the process. We know where we are, and where we are trying to get to, but key to all this will be how the provisions are implemented and enacted. I have a very general question. Does the bill provide the correct avenues to achieve the aims? Does it have the money attached to do that? What unintended consequences do we need to be mindful of as we go through the process?
I am happy to hear from all three witnesses. Fraser McKinlay, your microphone light is on, so I will start with you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Roz McCall
Claire Burns, you mentioned implementation. I had real concerns about that when the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill was going through Parliament. I guess that this question will be for everybody but, from your point of view, Claire, are the avenues that the Government has chosen to make this work and to implement the changes—including the financial and workforce planning aspects and so on—the right ones to achieve the outcomes that we are trying to get to?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Roz McCall
Please feel free to let me know what those are. Ms Galli, have you got anything else to add?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Roz McCall
That is wonderful—thank you. I have no more questions, convener.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Roz McCall
Do you want to comment, Sheriff Mackie?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Roz McCall
That is very helpful. Thank you very much.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Roz McCall
That is very helpful.
The bill will go through stages 2 and 3, and there will be amendments and so on, but can you flag up any unintended consequences of the bill as it has been drafted, from a legal perspective?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Roz McCall
I thought that that would be the answer. I thought that privacy would be in there too, but that is fine. Anyone else?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Roz McCall
I think that you have already answered this question, so I am only asking to get clarity. The subordinate legislation under section 21 can amend primary legislation, but, as you have already highlighted, bodies such as the Electoral Commission do not want to get involved in that. Are you happy that the issue of changing primary legislation has been covered by the Electoral Commission’s submission? If not, would it be better to limit that power? I think that you have already answered that question, but I want to highlight that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
Roz McCall
That is fine.