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: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
Just to clarify, is it the case that the board has not yet made a recommendation as to whether it should be an overnight count or a next-day count?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
At the outset, the minister mentioned the online absent voting application procedure and the UK private members’ bill in relation to that. Given the timing and the nature of the requirements, there is no feasible prospect of that procedure being in place for the election in May next year, and it would be unfair for anyone to expect that that would be in place by then. Is that a fair summation?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
I suppose that the follow-up question relates to the six-month period before the election takes place, in which—I know that the minister agrees with this—we need a very stable and unchanging environment. On the off-chance that the legislation will be in place in time, is the minister utterly convinced that it will not unsettle that settled playing field before the election, or can people who are watching say, “No, we can still agree that, six months out from the election, we will know what it’s going to look like”?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
Yes, that is the part that I meant. I am trying to ensure that we are going to maintain the six-month period, plus a little bit. We know the time that such things need to go through.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
I note that the deadline for reporting on the SSI is 10 October.
I thank the minister and those supporting him for attending this morning.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
Indeed, and perhaps we could look at whether we need to rely on more than just decisions on whether there is overlap.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
Good. My other question, which is about the equality impact assessment, is twofold. First, why did it take so long to produce, given the content of the order? Secondly, why was it published so late?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
Absolutely. It is a question of allowing adequate and proper scrutiny to take place. The equality impact assessment was published on 16 September. I absolutely accept the difficulties and aim no criticism at all at any of those who support the minister on the matter, but there are timetables for when such things should be provided. Those timetables were established because they give enough time for adequate and proper consideration.
The one element that concerns me about the impact assessment’s contents relates to an issue that you have acknowledged—the subjective challenge of conducting impact assessments with young people and the way in which that is achieved. The process of the order is one thing, but, on a slightly wider scale, with regard to the work that was done on the bill that is now the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025, and on the other legislation, are you any the wiser about how to reach out to young people and to measure the impact on them, rather than engaging only with those who feel that they speak for them—in fact, some do speak for them—and others who say that the subjective evidence is, “There’s no problem here. It must be good because we say it’s good”?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
What concerns me is that, despite the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child here and the very strong foundational requirement for human rights, the impact assessment for the order states:
“Officials are largely reliant on anecdotal evidence from electoral administrators.”
If we look at those coming out of care, we are talking about, first of all, a relatively small group, but also a group that contains some of the most vulnerable individuals.
I suppose that my question is: are you genuinely content that you have come to an understanding of their needs and expectations? I absolutely accept that a single person’s input was invaluable in occasioning this particular change, and I echo your thanks to them and your hopes that that provides good evidence that individuals can change policy, but are you content that you have captured the expectations and needs of this group in particular, given the evidence that we have heard about the geographical challenge that it brings?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
Martin Whitfield
That is helpful.
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