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 895 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 6 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
That would be good—any progress in that area would be welcomed by this committee and others.
Malcolm Graham, I will give you a chance to come back in on some of the stuff that you talked about and which both of you had begun to reflect on in previous answers. Could there be more efficiency in other areas of the criminal justice system? You had started to talk about some of the IT systems, for instance. Can you give some practical examples of how that work might create efficiencies, perhaps with social work or health services?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
I think that that was for the previous panel, but I am happy to ask it if you want. That is absolutely no problem.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Excellent, thank you. I will keep my questions specific to Stephen Llewellyn from North Lanarkshire Council. I declare an interest in that I know and work well with Stephen in his role as chief housing officer.
Stephen, I will ask about something that it might be helpful for the committee to know about. I note that North Lanarkshire Council has a quite an ambitious plan to acquire 100 properties this year via the open market purchase scheme. Will you share the lessons that you have learned from that and say what else you think your council and other councils could do to extend and improve the buy-back scheme to increase stock levels?
11:00Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Sorry, convener. There have been some connection issues here today—I am not sure why.
I was saying that the Scottish Government has consistently called on the UK Government to abolish the bedroom tax and permanently uprate local housing allowance. Do the witnesses think that those reforms are needed? What impact do they think that they might have on the housing emergency?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Thank you, convener, and good morning to the witnesses.
I hope that you can hear me okay now and that the network issues have been resolved.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
That answer was really helpful. I have one further question. I do not want to step on other members’ toes, because I know that we will be coming to the issue of voids, but can you talk about the void situation in North Lanarkshire? How are you ensuring that the situation is managed effectively? I know that North Lanarkshire Council has a good story to tell on voids, so could you elaborate on that?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Good morning. The time definitely seems to have gone by very quickly in this evidence session.
I wanted to focus my line of questioning on the interplay of the relationship between the Scottish and UK Governments. Obviously, we have a new UK Government in place now. One of the things that the Scottish—[Inaudible.]—consistently called on the UK Government—[Inaudible.]—I wonder whether the panel agree that those reforms are needed, and can they elaborate on what they think might be the impact—[Inaudible.]—on the housing emergency of such reforms?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Hello, convener. I did not ask to come back in.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
That was a wee surprise that I got an additional question.
The Scottish Government has emphasised the need for UK Government involvement and more joint working in arguing for the abolition of the bedroom tax and the restoration of the LHA rates. If those measures were implemented, how could that help to solve the underlying housing emergency in Scotland, particularly in the witnesses’ local areas?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 5 November 2024
Fulton MacGregor
Yes, convener. In the interests of time, I will roll my last two questions into one. Do the witnesses think that there are any other short-term actions that the UK Government could take to help address the housing emergency in Scotland? I wonder also what they think about the forthcoming Scottish Government budget with regard to that issue, following the UK Government budget last week.