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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 1471 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
Thank you for that. Who, then, has the responsibility for ensuring that victims of coercion or the kind of non-consensual approach in a faith-based setting, which Megan Snedden talked about, know that what is happening is wrong? I suppose that it comes back to education and collective responsibility in society. Does anyone have something else to say about that? If people do not know that what is happening to them is wrong, how can they get out of that situation and get support?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
I thank the panel members for all their contributions this morning; we have covered a wide range of issues.
Following on from Michelle Thomson’s questioning, I want to pick up on a couple of issues. We have talked about the fact that a labour shortage is not the same as a skills shortage, and about some of the analysis around that, which relates to house prices, rural-urban splits and so on. There has also been discussion of T-shaped employees versus I-shaped employees and how we support and generate the right approach in that respect. Quite a few of you have spoken about the need to adopt a new mindset, which goes for employers as well as employees.
Many of the responses have focused on what we need to do to get the right skills, the right training and development, and the right infrastructure in place. We have not heard so much about the cultural aspect; employers and employees are people, and I wonder what research has been done—or analysis you have—that would allow us to better understand how we take people with us on the journey. We cannot just say, “You need to adopt a new mindset here.” We need to do work on how we take them with us.
11:30If you have any analysis in that space, from that information, what do the Scottish Parliament and Government need to prioritise in how we look at that, particularly around the clear economic—and, I would argue, moral—drivers for having a diverse workforce that acknowledges the breadth of experience and skills that we can bring to our economy? That question goes first to Chris Brodie and I would also be interested to hear from Mairi Spowage.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
I will change tack a little bit. I know that, earlier this year, the Scottish Government published its response to the consultation on challenging men’s demand for prostitution. There was no specific approach or proposal set out by the Government in that consultation. Can you give a sense of what the approach might be, and of what the timescale might be over the next five years?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
I want to come back on two points. In the counselling and therapeutic space, in psychiatry and psychotherapy, there are already guidelines around not doing conversion therapy. What routes would a ban open up to a survivor of such behaviour that they do not already have available to them?
My other question is on the criminalisation of the non-medical and non-religious forms of conversion therapy that may take place behind closed doors in a family home. How would you see that playing out?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
Thank you for that. I hear what you say about that issue dividing opinion and I am pleased to hear what you said about making Scotland a hostile place for sex trafficking; that is well said and I doubt that any people around this table will disagree with it.
11:45I am interested in the division and conflict around what harm reduction means, and I have a separate question around the need to hear the voices of sex workers and people who are not in prostitution for reasons relating to a mechanism of abuse, or for whom it is not their only means of financial support or security. I am interested in understanding how the work over the next two, three or four years to gather support and information for the Scottish Government’s approach will recognise those very vocal but dissenting voices from organisations such as Scot-Pep and all the people who support their approach to sex workers’ rights.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
I have a couple of questions to explore the role of the medical profession in this context. Blair Anderson outlined the definition of conversion therapy. What sort of links with medicalisation are we talking about, and what is the relationship between support for people and the potential criminalisation of medical professionals? What are your thoughts on that, and what do you want to happen in that space?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
My questions follow on from what Pam Duncan-Glancy asked about. I thank the minister and her officials for what they have said so far, but I want to explore the changes to legal aid a bit further. I was grateful to hear what Denise Swanson said about the opportunities and potential that arose from views in the consultation, and how those might be taken forward.
Pam Duncan-Glancy’s question was about a timescale, which is key. There are several other areas of access to justice—in particular, debt advice—where the system does not currently meet need very well. Could you say a little bit more about that?
On what you said earlier about ADR, is there a way to tie the two things together? As you suggested, not everything has to go through a formal court process, but there needs to be support for people to go through the ADR process—not only financial support, but wraparound support, for mediation and other forms of dispute resolution.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
I should also have declared an interest at the start. I support the campaign and have signed the pledge. I appreciate the witnesses’ frankness, openness and honesty. Talking about personal stories is not always easy and I appreciate your willingness to do that in a public forum.
This might be a little off piste, but you might not expect anything else from me. I know that you are specifically focusing on the LGBTQI+ community when you talk about a complete ban on conversion therapy. We are considering the legislation that is to come from the UK Government and whether we want to put something together ourselves. What would the consequences be if we were to expand that to include conversion therapy for people who are not neurotypical? Autistic conversion therapy uses the same kinds of coercion and torture that you have both spoken about. What would be the pros and cons of widening this out into a ban on all conversion therapies, not only those around gender and sexuality?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 1 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
Does Dave Moxham want to come in on that and, in particular, on what the committee and the Parliament need to think about with regard to the intersection of labour force wellbeing and economic resilience?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 1 September 2021
Maggie Chapman
I thank the panel of witnesses for their comments so far. To build on Fiona Hyslop’s question, I am interested in how we look at economic recovery in the context of our broader and wider economic strategy, with a view to the wellbeing focus that Fiona mentioned, and in the intersections of worker wellbeing in all that, because we cannot have a resilient economy if our labour force is not fit and able to do the work that it needs to do.
In Rose Marley’s opening remarks, she mentioned that, generally, co-operatives have fared much better than other forms of business. Could you say a little more about that and, in particular, how that relates to employee wellbeing and employee mental health? I am also interested to hear from Dave Moxham and possibly from Carolyn Currie, as well.