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 2340 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Who would determine that? Will there be any guidelines in place for a sheriff—if such a case goes before a sheriff? How would the determination as to whether there is a legitimate issue be arrived at?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Thank you. My other question is about the ability of people to use the new protections.
As you well know, minister, when considering the Housing (Scotland) Bill, the committee heard about issues around how tenants can be made aware of and enabled to exercise and enforce their rights. It sounds as though the same issues might confront us in relation to the Renters’ Rights Bill. How do you see us giving support to tenants who may wish to bring issues forward? What support might they be able to receive?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Is that access available for people now?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Thank you.
On the expertise that you have with which to conduct an inquiry and investigation, do you have the breadth of experience that is needed to look at healthcare? We have talked about that this morning. From where do you draw expertise to conduct a thorough, proper and balanced investigation? We know that public bodies will have all the expertise to hand to answer you, but often the complainer will not have that same depth and breadth of awareness, so how do you make sure the process is balanced? How do you make sure that you have the expertise that you need to conduct an investigation?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Willie Coffey
So you need the power to compel, because your experience is that you might not get a response or the quality of response that you hope for.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Minister, you mentioned communications and the issues in that regard that have been raised with the committee in the past couple of years. You have given the committee some assurances about the communications improving. Do residents get information from any source other than the Scottish Government? Do the builders who built the buildings that may be subject to this work communicate regularly or otherwise with the residents? When will we see some tangible evidence that residents are getting the information that they seek?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 10 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Good morning, minister. I have a couple of questions. The Renters’ Rights Bill sets out that there will be a defence for a prospective landlord to show that the conduct is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Could you give some examples of what that might mean in practice?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Thanks very much convener. Good morning—[Inaudible.]—that discussion that we had with Murdo Fraser’s questions.
I am interested in how the growth deals have kept pace with changing political objectives at Scottish or UK Government level. I am thinking about things such as the national strategy for economic transformation and national planning framework 4, which as you know has themes at the heart of it such as community and place, local living, 20-minute neighbourhoods, nature and biodiversity and so on. Can you give a flavour of how the growth deals have developed in more recent years to embrace and incorporate those wider changes in both Governments’ policies?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Can I come back in, convener?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
Willie Coffey
Okay.