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 724 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Daniel Johnson
Thank you.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Daniel Johnson
I have a couple of broad questions. I ask the forgiveness of my committee colleagues who have been through the first iteration of regulations, because I am slightly late to the party.
The substance of the regulations is about the fairness principle—it is about the balance between the landlord and tenant. As you have been looking at how this will operate, what contexts have been taken into consideration, given that there can be a broad range of different arrangements in a commercial lease situation, including retail? When adjudicating on the basis of fairness, will the adjudicator be looking purely at the pub industry, or taking a broader range of contexts into consideration?
09:15Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Daniel Johnson
We are all aware of the current state of pubs in particular within the hospitality industry, and the decline in their number. I am sure that we are all aware of pubs that have closed in our constituencies and regions. Indeed, a tenant very close to me has just given up his lease in what one would imagine would be a very successful pub. In relation to the adjudicator’s work within the overall framework for the legislation, will there be explicit consideration of the health of pubs, or will there just be consideration of the broader context?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Daniel Johnson
I will attempt to put one specific question to each of you. We will see how we go. However, that is already breaking my promise to my colleagues that I would ask only two to three questions. I will put that down to my bad maths.
First, I will ask Jane Wood and Claire Mack about regulation. There is a regulatory review group. I know that neither of you sits on that group, but regulation is clearly often where the rubber hits the road with Government policy. Have you seen any impact, benefit or improvement from that effort? What more do you think could be done?
10:00Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Daniel Johnson
Those points are excellent. I was just turning to the convener to say that perhaps we should end the committee session there. If there is one message that we should all be listening to, it is that one.
Nathalie, I will come to you. You made the good point that business should try to understand precisely where decisions are being made. That said, I would say that the onus is more on us. You talked about the pattern of engagement and how it started off with businesses coming to the new deal for business and the industry leadership groups. Are we making it too difficult to engage? Do we need to rethink that? Certainly, when I was running my business, I would not have had the time to come along once a month, or even once a quarter, to essentially give a day to meetings. Do we need a short, sharp, practical way to better engage with more businesses?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Daniel Johnson
So, ban acronyms; ban PowerPoint. Got it. And with that, I will finish my question.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Daniel Johnson
That would make it more difficult to appeal a change of RV.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Daniel Johnson
I will not ask any more questions, but I should declare an interest as someone who has had to appeal a rateable value decision in the past, so I know how difficult that is. I just want that reflected on the record.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Daniel Johnson
To summarise, there has been engagement, but you have yet to see the outcomes. Is that fair?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Daniel Johnson
My fellow committee members were giving me grief for asking too many questions previously, so I will put one question to Leon Thompson. To the rest of the panel, I note that one of my takeaways from what Paul Mitchell said is to ask whether we are making it easy. The Government might be talking to you, but does it really understand your members? That is my just my reflection.
Leon, you sit on two really critical groups: on regulatory reform, and on non-domestic rates. First, can you clarify when the regulatory reform group last met? Secondly, our previous panels have asked whether there are clear outcomes, so I would like your reflection on that. Thirdly, on the non-domestic rates group, if it is not discussing the reform of non-domestic rates, what is it discussing, if I may put it like that?