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 1398 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ross Greer
That is not a good use of your time.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ross Greer
You talked about early engagement about the programme for government. Does COSLA accept that trust in that process would have to be robust and to work both ways? To be brutally honest, there have been issues in the very recent past when there have been leaks from COSLA about Scottish Government policy announcements. We would have to move quite dramatically away from that culture, which I presume is not an officer culture but is the reality of COSLA being led by 32 councillors from various political persuasions. Early engagement on the PFG, which is confidential until the moment when it is published, could not work if the level of leaking that we have seen from the COSLA leaders group were to continue.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ross Greer
Just to check, does COSLA lobby the UK Government to give the Scottish Government a multiyear settlement? That is the only way in which local government is going to get a multiyear settlement.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ross Greer
I have loads more questions, convener, but I am conscious of time.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ross Greer
Your submission calls for the empowerment of local government in a number of places, which will be no surprise to committee members as it is a long-running scheme for COSLA. Can you distinguish between the powers that are currently exercised nationally that you think would result in better outcomes and more efficiencies if they were exercised locally versus powers that do not exist that you wish to see created for local government. In the first instance, what powers are exercised nationally that you believe would be more efficiently exercised or would achieve better outcomes if they were devolved to local government?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ross Greer
I have a specific question about teachers that I will ask in a moment, so, if you want to get into it, feel free.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Ross Greer
Cleland Sneddon, you mentioned the UK Government’s levelling up fund. This committee is very much trying to re-engage with the UK Government on that—we are trying to get Michael Gove to come back to the committee to give evidence on it.
However, your joint written submission also makes the point about the value of multiyear funding, which is another area that is ultimately in the gift of the UK Government. The Scottish Government cannot give multiyear funding if it is not getting a multiyear settlement.
I am interested in knowing what direct engagement SOLACE and COSLA have had with the UK Government. Every year, when we come to the point of setting the grant for local government in Scotland, it feels very much like a two-way discussion between local government and the Scottish Government. One of your key asks, and the overall financial envelope, are ultimately in the power of the third level of Government that we are talking about here. What direct engagement do you have annually with the UK Government?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Ross Greer
Mike Corbett’s point about not only reporting incidents but ensuring that what has motivated them has been accurately reported, particularly when it involves a protected characteristic, is really important. I am keen to hear from others on that, because I am aware that the Time for Inclusive Education campaign for LGBT inclusive education made the point that violence against queer pupils or staff was often being recorded as a generic incident of violence and that that motivating factor was not being recorded.
Personally, I am not remotely convinced that we are accurately recording violence against young women and girls in which misogyny is the motivating factor. Do the other witnesses believe that there is an issue there, too?
I also want to specifically ask Carrie Lindsay about the health and wellbeing census that she mentioned. There is really valuable data in that. I am interested to know how local authorities and schools have used that in the past to inform their policies on dealing with bullying and violence. I am also interested in how that data can be used, given the highly politicised discussion that took place about the census this year and the very variable return rate that we got. Is the census as usable now for that specific purpose as it has been in the past? I am aware that some schools got a 95 or 100 per cent response rate and that other schools and entire local authorities did not take part at all. Can we use the data this year in the way that we have in the past?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ross Greer
Thank you very much.
A couple of weeks ago, the committee had a round-table session with various representatives of public sector organisations. A point that came up during the discussion was that a number of bodies that were represented around the table had expressed an interest in the Scottish Government’s potential pilot of a four-day week. I say this with the significant caveat that this is by no means the universal position of trade unions that represent workers in the public sector, but a number of public sector workers in Scotland and local union representatives in various public agencies have expressed an interest in that to me, partly in recognition of the fact that they know that pay rises in line with inflation across the board in the public sector are not affordable right now. Although they are, obviously, interested in maximising the pay offer that is made to their members, they are expressing increasingly significant interest in other changes to terms and conditions that might be beneficial to workers. Do you have an update on the progress on the four-day working week pilot?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ross Greer
I have a factual question in the first instance, cabinet secretary, for which you might not have the answer to hand. Given that a number of public sector pay negotiations were concluded only after the Parliament passed the budget, do you know what the total public sector pay bill in Scotland now is for 2023-24?