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 2361 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
Jane, do you have any thoughts on that?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
The context here is very much the decisions that local authorities must make around household developments such as energy efficiency improvements or the installation of solar panels on roofs or whatever, or decisions around electric vehicle charging points or whatever infrastructure is important.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
My last question is about where decisions are made. Where is it appropriate to make decisions? Robbie Calvert spoke earlier about some of the challenges that departments have, particularly given the loss of senior managers and specialists in, for example, visual impact and ecology. For renewables development, is the current boundary between determination at local authority planning department level and determination at national Government level drawn at the right threshold? I am talking about section 36 applications under the Electricity Act 1989.
I am aware that some councils could receive an application for a hydro power scheme with an enormous environmental impact assessment. That would be hugely technical, with a huge amount of ecological work required around the hydrological assessment, but that might end up on the desk of a relatively junior planning officer. Is that a live issue? Does section 36 set the right level for determination?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
Thanks for joining us this morning. In the discussion that we had with the consul general this morning, we got a sense of the trauma of war and of what the long-term impact will be on the victims. I want to ask you about the offer of psychological support that aid agencies can bring and how that works on the ground, both in countries where there is conflict and in the communities to which people flee. Will you provide a sense of the funding and long-term support that is required for that?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
That leads me to another question, which is about the nature of the visas that are issued as short-term visas, as well as visas for seasonal workers, and some of the conditions that are applied to them, particularly that of no recourse to public funds. Does the Scottish Government have an assessment of how many people might be captured by that? If people鈥檚 visas are being extended until December, and there is some security that they might be in employment during that period, that is good. Of course, if people are out of employment during that period, and they are unable to access benefits and have no recourse to public funds, that is a very serious problem and could lead to homelessness and a range of other problems. Do you predict that that might be an issue and how would you tackle it?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
The situation is obviously developing rapidly and we all have one eye on Twitter to find out if there will be a genuine route to safety to the UK for Ukrainians.
This morning, we spoke in private with the consul general for Ukraine. We discussed the Ukrainian population that is already here, that is already part of our communities and part of us. We understand that around 7,000 Ukrainian nationals are in Scotland. The majority of them are seasonal workers and are clustered on the east coast of Scotland, working in north-east Fife, Dundee, Falkirk and Edinburgh. How can we support those people? They will be incredibly anxious. They will want to bring their family and loved ones over to Scotland as quickly as possible, but there are challenges in terms of language and of having enough qualified immigration advice to support them. What thinking has the Scottish Government given to how we can deliver immigration advice where people are, which is primarily in those communities on the east coast where they are employed as seasonal workers?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
I really get the sense of empowerment for people who have been disempowered. Sue, do you have anything to add?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
We have talked a lot about a national conversation and have highlighted particular strands of that conversation, such as the ticket office closure consultation, the first complete national timetable review in Scotland in, I think, 30 years and a welcome focus on women鈥檚 safety. How do our witnesses see a national conversation going forward? We have heard mention of having passenger representation on the board or some kind of focus on that. However, is there a wide way of doing things? For example, could we have a kind of citizens assembly on ScotRail? Should we have more regular and involved discussions about services at a community level? We are in quite a participatory democracy, but I am not seeing that read across into some of the discussions about the future of ScotRail. It all seems to be quite disjointed.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
Does Mick Hogg, or anyone else, have views on that?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Mark Ruskell
Later this week, we will finally get the report into the tragedy at Carmont, near Stonehaven. I do not want to pre-empt the detailed findings of that report, but do you have any broad recommendations about dealing with the two issues of climate adaptation on the rail network and how we ensure that services on the network are safe, and how franchises and the operator of last resort should be run? Are there any lessons in relation to rolling stock or safety that need to be brought into the discussion? You have all mentioned safety as a top issue in getting people back on to the railways. Do you have any thoughts on that?