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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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 2161 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
We will have a memorandum of understanding, and the guidance is under development. I suspect that somebody will ask whether franchising could go ahead whether or not the regulations are annulled. It could, and the traffic commissioner would still establish a panel but, without the regulations, there would be no conversation with officials or the Scottish Government about what the panel would look like, what its make-up would be or what its parameters were. The guidance that is under development will be part of the legislation, which will allow us to have full input into what the commissioner will do when they set up a panel.
My understanding is that, in 2019, we wanted to ensure that there was no political interference in something that is so big and so important and that it would be done independently. The process has to be gone through. It is not that simple to cut the corners. We can put it into the memorandum of understanding that the guidance that is under development will provide the parameters that the traffic commissioner will work to. If the regulations were annulled and if we continued with franchising, the traffic commissioner would make the decisions and we would have no input whatsoever.
09:15Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
We could revisit the act if people wanted us to do that, but we would have to forget about franchising between now and 2026, because we would have to go back to stage 1.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
Will the member take an intervention?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
I did not say that I am confident about that; I said that it is a possibility. SPT is putting huge amounts of time and resource into the process of looking at its financial model and everything else that it will have to do. The current position means that we are going to stall the progress of the legislation that would allow SPT to set up a franchise. If the regulations do not pass, SPT will have to decide whether it wants to continue putting the time and resource into that effort when it is not sure what the direction of travel will be.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
I have not had any discussions with SPT. I am merely making the point that a huge amount of time and resource goes into the work that it is having to do around the process. If the instrument stalls today, I anticipate there being a risk that SPT could say that, until there is clarity on and certainty about what the legislation will do, it will pause spending money and putting resource into the process. I am merely making the point that that is a risk.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
There does. It is in primary legislation.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
No, I do not think that that is correct: we would have to change the 2019 act. That could not be done in a short timescale. I keep reiterating that we either pass the regulations or we do not, and we have already debated the consequences of that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
Yes, there is.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
The process that you talk about being used down south is the Nexus process, which was different from this one. That looked at financial aspects; we are looking at the entire effect of franchising.
I will give you an example from my area. There are cross-border issues with bus provision in my constituency, and I give this as a purely random example of a possibility. If we decided in my area to go down a franchising route, we would be required to talk to all the other areas in our locality, so that there was joined-up thinking.
The process that was used down south failed the scheme on finances. My understanding is that the business case was not robust enough, so the proposal was then rejected.
One of the beauties of what we are proposing to put in place is that anyone who wants to go down the franchising route鈥攊t will be entirely their choice whether to do so鈥攚ill have to be absolutely clear in their mind that they have put forward the strongest business case, that they have consulted everyone who has a stake and a vested interest in what the franchise looks like and that they have spoken to their neighbours, because everyone knows that if you want to plant a hedge, that will affect your neighbour, and this is a similar kind of thing. Those involved will have to ensure that they have taken the biggest possible picture that they can in deciding that they want to do this and that they are going to go down this route.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 29 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
You talk about correction, but what does that mean? It means that we would go back to the primary legislation, and I can only see that creating a much longer delay, going into the next session of Parliament.