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 656 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I do not know where the cabinet secretary’s officials shop, but I have just checked and every B&Q in Edinburgh has no availability until after the relevant date. Perhaps the cabinet secretary could ask officials where they shop.
I am interested in the cabinet secretary’s definition of “a bit more time” and “reasonable time”. What do they mean in practice? Is it days, weeks or months?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Farmers and those who work in the agricultural and rural sectors have experienced great difficulty with mental health and loneliness throughout the pandemic. Lockdowns and self-isolation have added to those difficulties. The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution’s “The Big Farming Survey” has revealed that 35 per cent of the entire farming community have described themselves as “probably” or “possibly” depressed. The figure for women in agriculture is higher, at 43 per cent. What will the cabinet secretary do to support farmers and farming charities to deal with the mental health crisis in our rural communities?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Jeremy Balfour
To ask the Scottish Government what support it provides to farming charities. (S6O-00611)
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 21 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
There can be no doubt that, as others have said, Scotland is facing a difficult period with regard to the housing market. Here, in the Lothians, it can be seen starkly as rents rise and the number of available properties falls. Something has to be done to address the problems, and I put on the record my and my party’s willingness to work with anyone in this Parliament on reasonable measures.
However, we must be careful about what constitutes a reasonable measure. We must not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of thinking that doing something is the same as helping. We must not allow ourselves to be seduced by the easy option of measures that will help in the short term but wreak untold damage in the future. It is incumbent on the members of this Parliament not to be short sighted but to see beyond dogmatic convictions and consider the consequences of legislation beyond the current five-year session of Parliament.
The Government’s so-called new deal for tenants is not the revolutionary legislation that it would have the country believe. It is a package of old, tired and previously unsuccessful policies that define the concept of a short-term fix at the expense of future generations.
My colleagues in the Green Party like to talk about the settled science. I am afraid that, when it comes to rent controls, the verdict is in—and they do not work. Mr Rennie asked for evidence of why we are going down this road. It is not as though we do not have example after example from around the world of rent controls having been implemented and having failed to fix the problem of affordability.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 21 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I think that the minister would recognise that the countries in Europe that he is talking about have a very different housing market from ours in Scotland.
The biggest issue that we face is that, if we go for rent control, landlords who have only one or two flats will simply sell them. That will take them off the market and those who are looking to rent will have less choice rather than more choice. That, in economic terms, means that rents will go up. Of course, there will be short-term benefits for renters if the proposals go ahead. However, they are minimal and will be dwarfed by the costs for future renters.
I would argue that none of this is controversial. An economist from the left-leaning Brookings Institution in America stated that
“Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability”,
makes negative extremes and affects surrounding neighbourhoods in a way that no one would expect. I would suggest that, if we go down the way of rent controls, that is what would happen in this country.
Yes, we need to fix the problem that has been created over the past 14 years. Scotland would be better served by the Scottish Government if it focused on meeting its targets for new houses built, a measure that would effectively bring prices down and ensure that there was enough accommodation for everybody to have, instead of trying to fix the market.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what flexibility will be afforded for the installation of interlinked fire alarms in light of recent reports about the available funding for low-income households. (S6T-00356)
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
Will the cabinet secretary define a “reasonable” period? What is the cut-off date when the law will be enforced? That will give people certainty about when the work needs to be done by, rather than a vague timescale that is reasonable.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I will press the cabinet secretary. If alarms are not fitted by the appropriate time, there will be home insurance issues. What conversations has she had with home insurers about whether policies will be valid? When will it be decided that the reasonable period has ended? The Government must fix a date at some point—or is it unwilling to make the decision?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I follow Fiona Hyslop, Presiding Officer.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
Many cultural venues across Scotland have succumbed to damage in the past few months, after underuse as a result of the pandemic and battering from recent storms. What will the Scottish Government do to protect some of the most vulnerable buildings in communities across Scotland?