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 1499 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for that. I want to pick up on what Ronnie Palin said about the skills perspective. I know that a lot of work is going on to make sure that girls in particular can participate. Surely part of the just transition has to be that more than half the population has skin in the game. How do you ensure that women and girls are at the just transition party? What is the latest position on your active development of that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
You have given me a lot of information. I know that other members want to come in, and I sense that Liz and perhaps Hisashi want to come in as well.
Thinking about the very important chemical cluster and SMEs around Grangemouth, how do we make this real for them? Part of the problem is that, although they are there, it might be difficult for them to get oven-ready, if you like, in order to be able to go on to procurement frameworks. It is about that linkage of working at both ends of the conundrum. The witnesses may want to pick up on some of the earlier themes, but I am interested in exploring that. Perhaps Liz wants to go first.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
I want to ask about targeting young people. I appreciate that the Forth Ports bid is at its very early stages, but I am interested in knowing more about how you will be able to drive down—if, indeed, you intend to do that—to actively target young people in job creation, which is another issue that Grangemouth, as a centre, struggles with.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending.
We have already alighted on a theme—from the inside looking out, particularly with reference to Grangemouth town. The people who live there often refer to the economy as a “DIDO economy”—drive in, drive out. That is the feeling.
Stuart, you have already touched on some of the active consideration that you gave to your bid, and I want to put some meat on the bones of that. When do you think that Grangemouth, as a community, will start to see some of the activity that has meaning to people there? I suppose that that also links in with what Liz was saying about frameworks for SMEs. A considerable amount of work is needed to change what is a good, thrusting sentiment about that involvement into actual meaningful engagement. I would appreciate some meat on the bones of that.
09:45Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
Do you all feel, at this point—it is, obviously, very early days—that you have the right people contributing? Should anybody else be contributing? Do you think, “We really need to bring in this organisation or group to make sure that all their views are reflected.”? Have you been able to cover everything?
Tell me whether my assumption is correct. One of the concerns around freeports that are expressed generally is that they displace economic activity. From my point of view, the fact that so much in the bid is centred around Grangemouth means that that will not be the case, because a lot of the economic activity is already there. The bid is simply galvanising that and can only add to it.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
Is everyone who needs to be involved involved at this point, given that it is early doors?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
Yes—I was going to go on to that.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
One would expect the larger employers to have the resources, notwithstanding anything else, to be able to adapt. Nevertheless, around 99.3 per cent of our businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises. Have you given any specific consideration to how you might support them with guidance, beyond the broad principles of fair work?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
I will continue on data, which we have started to discuss. I would like to understand a bit more about your specific plans. I fully accept that there is complexity in the types of disability that you are talking about. We have some data, but data is at the heart of getting an accurate picture. Could you give me a flavour of what is happening? You have said that you are looking at that, but what exactly are you looking at? By what dates do you plan to reach conclusions, recommend new data collectors and so on? Do you have any further information about that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Michelle Thomson
You are simply highlighting what I believe, which is that the situation is complex. It would be useful for the committee, and certainly for me, to understand a bit more deeply what you are planning. It becomes complex when we start to think about cross-cutting issues, and we know that there are various data sources.
Leading on from that, I note that a number of programmes are in place and we want to measure their success through various data collectors, of which we have some. We could, for example, introduce conditionality for grants and so on. It would be useful to understand more about that.
You mentioned culture, which is a fair point. That is linked to self-identification, about which people may, for very good reasons, be reluctant. As part of those plans, do you have anything else that looks at how you might support businesses to develop a culture of awareness and a culture of data collectors that you would potentially be able to support? That would be conditional on whether they were getting grants. That is another question about depth.