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 692 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
I will ask Alison to come in with some of the details on that, but, on the generality, there is likely to be a rebound in aviation as people travel post-pandemic. I am very much of the view that we have to tackle aviation emissions—of course we do—but we are an island nation and we do not want to cut ourselves off from travel and from economic and cultural exchange and so on with the rest of the world. A number of options are open to us, including the development of sustainable aviation fuels, among others.
On the strategy, I will hand over to Alison.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
That is a key point, and it is one of the many complexities. There is the availability of the charge network, the speed with which people can charge and the amount that it costs. All the variables that I mentioned in answering Mr Doris’s question also apply, in that the infrastructure is owned by different companies and set by different local authorities in some cases.
Obviously, our aim is to have the ultra-rapid chargers rolled out to the greatest extent possible, because they are the quickest and most convenient. I am increasingly seeing them, and they are a mark of how the technology has developed quite quickly over the period as people’s expectations of charging an electric car have grown. There is a mixed picture on the types of technology, their roll-out and the costs. Of course, ultra-rapid and fast chargers are the optimum and what we would all want to see.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
Yes. I think that the phrase that I used in my opening remarks was that it was scheduled for elimination, but I will let Dan Merckel give us a brief update on that in the context of perfluorinated and polyfluorinated substances, or PFAS.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
It is my intention that they will, yes. Phil Raines says that he can come in on that.
The statutory requirement regarding the plan is for it to be laid later than we are proposing. The Bute house agreement says that we will publish the first draft in November. My intention is that the just transition papers should go alongside that, because of the statutory commitment in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 for the Government to demonstrate that it has taken into account just transition principles. In my view, the publication of those plans is the way in which we will demonstrate how we have done that, and I think that it is right that they should coincide. I do not know whether Phil Raines wants to add anything to that—
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
Yes.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
Absolutely. We share Environmental Standards Scotland’s concerns about it all. ESS has put it better than I could.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
Yes, that last point is critical. The team believed that the approach that was taken, which was to consult deeply right at the beginning of the process, was the right way to do things so that we would be at the drawing board and could bring people to it with us. However, I absolutely accept that many people, in particular those who felt that they would be impacted by the proposals, did not feel that that was the right approach for them.
You mentioned the meetings. We had around 20 meetings prior to the publication of the plans, and we also held around 20 meetings during the consultation period in order to ensure that people could be taken through and could take part in the process, because that was really important to me.
Since the consultation closed, Mairi Gougeon and I have been meeting with stakeholders. She met with stakeholders in Shetland; I had a meeting with fisherpeople in Troon and with the Community of Arran Seabed Trust in Arran. I have met with Western Isles Council and with the Communities Inshore Fisheries Alliance, and I have plans over the summer to visit the Uists and—I hope—Orkney, although those are not yet finalised.
I think that it is confirmed—I do not want to pre-empt any decision of the Parliamentary Bureau—that I am due to give a statement this week on next steps on the protected marine areas. That being the case, I would not want to pre-empt any of what I say, but I note that I will be reflecting a little bit on some of the early consultation responses and giving my view on where we go from here on exactly the point that you mentioned: meaningful engagement.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
Of course. The extent to which we are not meeting our Government targets is a concern for me wherever it occurs. However, I have great confidence in the forestry industry. I flag up that it is not in my portfolio any more, so I am freewheeling in Ms Gougeon’s portfolio, which I ought not to do. Having had the role previously, however, I note that the forestry industry in Scotland is exceptionally well established. It brings £1 billion into the economy, it employs 25,000 people and it is doing exceptionally well. People around the world often ask us how they can mirror what our forestry industry has done.
We are pushing the industry with targets that are really stretching, but headwinds including Brexit, storm Arwen and a contraction in the availability of labour following EU exit have created difficulties in recent years. I want us to meet the annual targets for tree planting because that is essential to net zero. I have great confidence that the forestry industry in Scotland will face the headwinds, come through them and reach the very stretching targets.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
We should clarify, convener, that forestry is not in this portfolio.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
It comes back to the question of the public sector’s role in giving confidence to the market. We made an intervention early and we have been successful with it. It is only right that we now assess whether public funding should continue at the same level or whether the market is developing sufficiently. Alison Irvine’s point—which relates to yours, convener—is that some areas of the market might not drive the required change. That is where public funding can come back in.
We have done very well to date, but we need more charging points. It is worth pointing out that the current charging network is owned through a mixture of private and public investment.