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 235 contributions
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
Because we are speaking about UEFA tickets. Therefore, the lawyers and the bill team looked at who needed to be exempted to ensure that we covered all bases. That is why the provision is included.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
Touting is selling a ticket for a profit. There is one organisation that will definitely be selling tickets for a profit for this event, and that is UEFA. Therefore, for clarity and for legal purposes, it is important to make sure that UEFA is exempt.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
Yes. I was about to say that there are exemptions for the likes of protests. Clearly, those are protected and subject to normal legislation—they are not covered by the bill. There is a particular exemption in the bill with regard to protests.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
First, Northern Ireland is not a host nation now—
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
My understanding is that enforcement officers will have similar powers—although I am not too sure to which specific powers you are referring. I will bring in Lucy Carmichael.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
Again, we have carried out all the assessments—sorry, just to clarify, are you talking about post-event?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
I do not know whether Lucy wants to come in on that aspect.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
Yes, but that applies to many laws in the country. In this context, the UK Government will presumably introduce its own legislation in response to UEFA’s demands so that it can host the games in England.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
We are co-operating, and there will be discussions with the UK Government. However, you are taking us into the realm of whether we would want the UK Government to legislate on all devolved issues, and that—
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Richard Lochhead
That provision was put in because UEFA sells tickets and must make a profit on the tickets that it sells.