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 1891 contributions
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
I would say—tongue in cheek—that it is because there has been a lack of clarification that the question arose in the first place. You have put it on record that the Government is confident that the provision will stand the test, perhaps even a judicial test, and that you have advice that supports that view.
Does any other committee member have any other questions before I turn to a colleague who is joining us today?
Just for the record, I note that the 14-day period in respect of being a member of the House of Lords is a period of time that has been chosen, in essence, so that someone in such a position can resign. Is the Scottish Government confident that there are no circumstances that may exist where it would be impossible for an individual to resign within 14 days, for example if the House of Lords is not sitting between a general election and the King’s speech?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
Excellent.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
The deadline for reporting is 27 October. As we have nothing further to do in public, I bring the public part of the meeting to an end.
10:19 Meeting continued in private until 10:34.Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
Good morning, and welcome to the 17th meeting in 2025 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I have received apologies from Annie Wells, and we are joined by Edward Mountain as her substitute—good morning, Edward.
Under agenda item 1, does the committee agree to take in private item 6, which is on guidance on legislative consent?
Members indicated agreement.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
Again, for the purpose of clarification, given that the Scottish Parliament rightly and understandably has no control over the salaries of members of Parliament, it was decided to take the same approach with the three statutory instruments, which relate to two elected roles and one unelected role, because it is easier and more pragmatic to make the deduction from the MSP salary. Control over that can be provided, and the practicalities of implementing that can then be dealt with. Is that right?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
The one outstanding period of time relates to councillors. The longer exception in that regard is a response to an understandable concern about multiple by-elections occurring following a Holyrood election. However, 372 days is a considerable period of overlap. Did that form any part in the consideration of whether there should be a dual salary for a period? If not quite two full-time jobs, there is one plus an almost full-time job to take account of, so someone is effectively being required to hold down two jobs, but with a penalty to their salary. Was that part of the consideration in either coming up with the 372 days or just saying that the burden of multiple by-elections outweighs the benefit of looking at anything less than that?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
My other question is about what mechanisms will exist to monitor that. Councillors could resign their councillorship much earlier than that, so this is a sort of long stop. What will prevent multiple by-elections from occurring in around September of the year of a Holyrood election?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
What concerns me is that, in the public responses to the consultation, there is a very strong view that members should not hold two positions. There will be enormous pressure on new MSPs to immediately resign their council seats in order to give a full-time commitment to this job, and undertakings to do so will probably be extracted from them during the election period.
I understand why the SSIs have been articulated as an environment in which this change can happen. However, that has perhaps ignored a reality—I think more with councillors than with MPs, because that would be resolved and understood before the election—that multiple council by-elections could happen only months before the start of the campaign for the new council elections in 2027.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
Absolutely.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Martin Whitfield
Emma, do you want to come back? I am not sure that that actually answers your question.