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 2321 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, minister and colleagues. The Scottish Association of Landlords told us that the temporary change to make all evictions discretionary has had little impact in terms of the tribunal’s refusal of eviction orders. If that is the case, why would making that a permanent arrangement benefit tenants?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Some respondents to the committee have said that there is little evidence to support the claim that pre-action protocols will have a positive impact. How do you see such measures working? Will they help us to reduce overall rent arrears or prevent eviction cases going to tribunal? Can you say a little about that?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Willie Coffey
My second question is probably for John Blackwood. To what extent do you think that the proposal to remove the mandatory eviction grounds provides us with the right balance between the rights of tenants and the rights of landlords?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Willie Coffey
On retention, your briefing gives us a statistic that one in four staff—25 per cent—leaves within the first three months. That must be quite a worry. Will you give us more information about why that happens? Is it pandemic related or was it happening before the pandemic? What can we do to turn that around?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Auditor General, your briefing also reminds us that £500 million extra was awarded to local government in 2019-20. The big question is: do you know how much of that funding was used for social care commissioning purposes—or did it find its way elsewhere?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Willie Coffey
I turn to issues to do with the commissioning of services. Your briefing tells us that we tend to
“focus on cost, rather than quality or outcomes”.
That is despite spending £5 billion on the overall service. Is there a case for getting in those who are involved in the commissioning process at an early stage so that the tension between cost and outcomes could, to some degree, be avoided?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Okay. My final question was going to be about the competition issue that the Auditor General raised, but I think that he has adequately covered that. If there is a more collaborative approach and people are involved at an earlier stage, we might gain more and, rather than focusing on costs, we might focus on quality.
I will hand back to the convener and allow other members to come in.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning. Before I ask about workforce issues, Auditor General, can you say something about how the briefing complements, reflects, mirrors or does otherwise in respect of the Feeley report that was published about a year ago? How much does the briefing find itself in harmony with that report’s recommendations, and what progress has been made?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Willie Coffey
That kind of leads into my next question. Last year, we had an evidence session on Scotland’s colleges. In it, the principal of Edinburgh College set out some of the more innovative approaches that the college is taking to address the increasing demand for a social care workforce. They include enabling students who are studying social-care related disciplines to undertake a mixture of studies, skills development and work-based opportunities, and provision of dual qualifications in childcare and social care. Is such thinking being considered across Scotland? If so, is it having a positive impact?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Willie Coffey
I turn to the workforce issues that are mentioned in your briefing, which tells us about the difficult environment in which the paid social care workforce operates. It also refers to the increasing demand for social care, which is coupled with a wide range of recruitment and retention challenges. What has the Government been doing and what is it doing to respond to that challenge and to ensure that we increase the number of people with social care skills?