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 2881 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
John Mason
There was a fear that some issues, such as autism, would get lost in a huge human rights commission. That may be not so much a question for you as for the committees.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
John Mason
If I cannot ask you, I cannot think who else I would ask.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 28 May 2024
John Mason
My understanding of the rapporteur model is that someone might be appointed for, say, five years. There might be an emphasis on children for five years and then perhaps an emphasis on older people.
Liz Smith suggested that we could somehow freeze the system, so the present unfairness would carry on but we would at least stop more unfairness coming in. We heard Age Scotland and others saying that if children need a commissioner, older people need one too—although it has to be said that older people have a vote. I am reluctant to go down that route and will not ask your opinion.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
John Mason
I am going to ask about targets. I think that 26 per cent of children are living in poverty at the moment, in Scotland, but we are meant to be hitting a target of 18 per cent by 2023-24 and 10 per cent by 2030-31. You have all said that the picture is much more complicated than that, but in politics that is the only number that matters, because it is the only one that politicians talk about. Based on that statistic, it appears that the Scottish child payment has not had a huge impact. Dr Stone, you talked about not having a narrow view, but politicians do have a narrow view. How can we tackle that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
John Mason
I will leave it at that, because I think that Bob Doris will go into that space, too.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
John Mason
Professor Tominey, should we be setting targets at all? Would it be better if we did not, and instead just did good work?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
John Mason
I will explore the other side of Marie McNair’s question. Seeing as Professor Patrick was speaking about that, perhaps she could start.
We are talking about something like 54,000 low-income children who are not getting universal credit. However, the other angle is that some who are not in low-income households—we have been given a figure of 241,000—are in receipt of universal credit and the Scottish child payment. It is obviously nice to give people money, but is that a good use of funding?
10:00Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
John Mason
Well, is it a worry or not? I do not know.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
John Mason
I am reassured from what you are saying that things are improving, because we have felt in the past that there has not been a great understanding. If things are improving, that is positive.
11:00Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
John Mason
We have had a lot of good input already. Mention has been made of the commissioners that we are not looking at, which include the likes of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, the Auditor General and the relevant bodies for prisons and constabulary. Have we made a mistake in just concentrating on the ones that are supported by Parliament? Should we have been looking at the wider landscape?