Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
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.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
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.
Search by MSP
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.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
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.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
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:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
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.
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Displaying 824 contributions
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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 state that changing rooms
“shall not be suitable unless they include separate facilities for, or separate use of facilities by, men and women where necessary for reasons of propriety”.
It is the Scottish Government’s duty to ensure that all public bodies comply with such regulations. However, we have seen female nurses and female police officers being forced to share changing facilities with biologically male colleagues. Why are the health boards and Police Scotland not complying with the regulations?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Thank you.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
You will be glad to know that I have only two more questions.
The Scottish Prison Service policy for the management of transgender people in custody allows for some men and trans identities to be housed in the women’s estate. That includes violent men, providing they do not have a known record of violence against women. In its equality and human rights impact assessment, the SPS says that it is public sector equality duty compliant. Is the Scottish Government confident that the SPS is PSED compliant?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Please do discuss them, because the situation right now is not very fair for women and girls out there. They do not have their dignity, respect or fairness right now, because they have to share single-sex spaces and services in many places. I hope that the Government will provide some clarity on this issue.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Good morning, and thank you for the information that you have provided so far.
John Wilkes, last week we heard from Jatin Haria from the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights. On the issue of reporting on the gender pay gap for women, he said:
“the numbers are stark enough to suggest that somebody is not doing their job.”—[Official Report, Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, 11 March 2025; c 15.]
When I asked him to go into more detail, he said that the issue extends to the Scottish Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. What is your response to that?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Thank you for providing clarity. There is fear about how people are interpreting the law for their organisations and fear that many more legal cases will be spurred on, because people are unclear about what should be done. As a member of the Parliament, I can see that people are unclear, so it was important that I asked you the question about how the EHRC perceives the issue, which is about how people are interpreting the law. You have guidance, which, I take it, any organisation can approach you for. Your doors are open, which is a good thing.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
We live in hope.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
Good morning, minister and officials. Thank you for the information that you have provided so far.
Last week, we heard from Jatin Haria from the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights. When it comes to reporting on the gender pay gap, he said:
“the numbers are stark enough to suggest that somebody is not doing their job.”—[Official Report, Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, 11 March 2025; c 15.]
When I asked him to go into more detail, he said that this extends to both the Scottish Government and the EHRC. I said that I would ask the Scottish Government about it, knowing that you were coming in today, minister. How do you respond to the comment that the Scottish Government is not doing its job?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
That was very helpful. I will certainly be asking the Scottish Government about this next week.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Public Sector Equality Duty
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Dr Pam Gosal MBE
I want to talk about not only toilets but facilities in general. We are not talking only about need, but about religion. My parents came to Scotland and I was born here, in Glasgow, and I think that equality should be there for everybody and needs should be addressed for everybody—I absolutely agree with that. However, we are talking about breaking a religion here. If I was in a changing room with my mother or Muslim auntie and she had to change in front of a biological male, that would break our religion. There are many consequences for that in the Muslim faith, in Indian faith and in other faiths that I could mention. How can we have balance in that regard? That is what this question involves.
I acknowledge what you are saying about need but, right now, people out there are really confused. It is not just about women and girls; it is about faith and religion. There is so much going on out there and nobody knows where the guidance is or who is guiding who. People from all backgrounds—not just religious backgrounds—are confused.
How do you see those issues? It is not just about toilets. I know for a fact that a Muslim woman cannot go into a changing room and change in the presence of a trans woman, because that person is a biological male. That view should not offend anybody. It is our religion, and we cannot change that. I am not going to break my religion for somebody else—I will be honest about that. I know how to keep myself safe and keep to my faith.
How do you balance those issues? I know that it is not just women from the older generation who would not go into that room; it is people from the younger generation, too.
