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 754 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 18 September 2024
Lorna Slater
I have two questions, the second one of which has come up. I will get into them.
Professor Roy, I am delighted that you highlighted the cost of not taking action, because the question “Who is going to pay for it?” frustrates me continually. Who is going to pay for it, if we do not? That would be much worse.
Professor Bell, you brought to our attention the fact that some of the changes that we need to make will not cost the public purse. I agree: not all the transformative policies that we need necessarily need to cost the public purse money.
I worry that, in this larger debate, there is a sometimes a tone of, “Oh, it is just too expensive. We can’t do it. Net zero is too expensive.” However, policies such as removing subsidies from aviation, giving farmers the same amount of money for doing slightly different things, demanding management charges such as congestion charges and workplace parking levies, having a carbon land tax and putting in regulation on heat pumps and insulation to level the playing field do not cost the Government anything. However, we have such difficulty moving those things forward.
Do either of you—perhaps Professor Roy—have any comment on what kind of political consensus we need? What is the difficulty in moving forward with those policies, even though they do not actually cost the public purse anything?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Lorna Slater
Thank you. My second question is about fair work. How has the fair work conditionality that the Scottish Government brought in affected the distribution of capital funding and other grants? Have you had to change your models? Are different companies applying? I am interested in hearing how that has gone.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Lorna Slater
I have three questions. The first two are for both enterprise agencies and the third is for HIE.
To follow on from Colin Smyth’s question—both Stuart Black and Jane Morrison-Ross have spoken on this topic—how do you measure the effectiveness of grants versus the support that you describe? In my mind, it is like the saying about teaching a man to fish versus giving a man a fish. How do you measure that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Lorna Slater
My final question is for Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Thank you for the paper that you sent; the traffic light system is useful. The external green investment figures, like all the external investment figures, are staggering and you have wildly exceeded your expectations. How was that achieved? Was it a one-off situation? How are you defining green investment and how are you ensuring that that money is actually going to people and businesses in Scotland?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 September 2024
Lorna Slater
Thank you, convener—I am grateful for your allowing me to come back in.
Scotland’s national parks have annual budgets of around £10 million a year. We have two of them; I am hoping that we are going to get a third. In terms of the success and the growth of the visitor economy, is that money well spent?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 26 June 2024
Lorna Slater
Thank you, convener. My interests are the same as those noted in my entry in the register of members’ interests: I worked for Orbital Marine Power at the time of my election and worked out my notice with the company after I was elected, and I am a member of Unite the union.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Lorna Slater
I will hand over to John Speirs for a bit more detail on that.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Lorna Slater
The border target operating model and the Windsor framework are two different things, but I will hand over to John Speirs to get into the weeds of it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Lorna Slater
I will give a summary and then hand over to John Speirs. Putting the border controls in place is all part of the progress of Brexit. There have been controls for high-risk goods, and now the controls for medium-risk goods are being put in place at the borders.
I ask John to give us some detail about how the businesses find out.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 20 March 2024
Lorna Slater
I absolutely share that concern. That is exactly the transition that the border target operating model represents. When we were a full member of the EU, we were able to trade goods without border checks. Trading with the EU has been relatively low risk in the interim period since Brexit because our regulations and requirements were in line. We will inevitably diverge over time, however much we would like to stay in alignment, so we must have border controls now that we are outside the EU. That is why the border controls are being brought in. Trade has been relatively low risk, but the risk could increase over time.
We are taking a risk-based approach. High-risk goods are already being checked, by both documentary means and physical inspections. That is being done at the place of destination, not at the border. Those high-risk goods are already being tracked and managed, and we are now bringing medium-risk goods into the regime, albeit with various exemptions that I would be happy to go into. Essentially, there is a phased roll-out of border controls.
John Speirs may wish to add more detail.