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 5056 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Do you wish to add anything further, minister?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
The result of the division is: For 4, Against 2, Abstentions 0.
Motion agreed to.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Are you aware of any work that is being done on or of discussions about the supply issue?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Yes, but what we are looking at here is a new-build heating strategy.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for that. We will have to end there. We have gone over time, although I had thought for a moment that we would finish sooner.
This has been such a great conversation, and I really appreciate your coming in or being online to help us to understand your perspectives.
I suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses and to reorganise the room.
10:21 Meeting suspended.Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Welcome back. We are joined by Patrick Harvie, who is the Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights, and by his officials Gareth Fenney, who is the head of heat networks and investment; Antonia Georgieva, who is the heat in buildings team leader—new-build heat standard, enforcement, traditional buildings; Claire Jones, who is the head of onshore electricity policy; and Norman Macleod, who is the senior principal legal officer. I welcome you all and invite the minister to make a short opening statement before I open the discussion to questions from members.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Just do it now.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thanks very much.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Thanks very much. It is good to have all of you here this morning for this conversation.
We will now turn to questions from members. Please indicate whether you would like to respond to any question that is asked, although I should say that we do tend to direct questions to someone initially. If you want to come in on the back of a question, please indicate as much.
As far as is possible in this setting, we are trying to have a free-flowing conversation rather than a question-and-answer session. Charlotte Lee and Duncan Sharp, as you are appearing virtually, you can indicate that you want to come in by typing R in the chat function. As, I think, witnesses already know, there is no need to turn your microphones on and off—that will be done for you.
I will begin the questions, and my first one is directed to Alan Stark. I am interested in hearing whether you agree with the principle of the Government’s approach to regulating for a new-build heat standard and that a regulatory rather than voluntary approach is needed to ensure that the Scottish Government meets its net zero targets.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Ariane Burgess
Charlotte Lee would like to come in.