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 778 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
Absolutely—you are exactly right. Measuring circularity in Scotland, never mind measuring circularity in different places around the world, is difficult. Monica Lennon is right that we should consider that. Exporting of our carbon footprint and our waste is not the goal. Our goal is to reduce consumption of materials overall, so that we reduce our impact here and globally. You are right that getting the detail on that is challenging, just as it is in developing specific targets, because this is all new and cutting edge.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
No. We are looking at using the super-affirmative procedure for charging for single-use items.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
I do not share the concern that companies will build different infrastructure just because we made them send their unused goods to charity—[Interruption.]—instead of to the incinerator—[Interruption.] That seems a bit extreme.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
—such as hygiene products and clothing, get into the hands of the people who need them.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
I am not concerned about that. Section 50 of the policy memorandum shows that an existing duty of care in legislation already
“requires that waste producers must take all reasonable measures to apply the waste hierarchy when disposing of goods and must also ensure that the waste is managed”.
Businesses already have a duty to do that, but we must ensure, as in all things, that we are making progress and moving forward. Banning the disposal of unsold consumer goods is the next step in that direction, but it is something that many companies are already doing.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
Absolutely. The approach would need to be developed in the spirit of the Verity house agreement. We need to develop the processes, systems and intentions at the same time as the funding regimes.
There are, of course, significant opportunities for setting up businesses—especially businesses that are associated with local authorities. I will flag up again Moray Waste Busters, which is an excellent example of a business that is associated with a local authority. It triages the waste that comes in and captures items that could be reused. Not all local authorities have such facilities, but where one has something like that in place, it is not only leasing a bit of land to a business, but that business is removing from the waste stream items that the local authority would otherwise have to pay for.
The issue is not always about supporting local authorities with costs; sometimes it is about supporting local authorities to find opportunities for savings—or even for increased revenue, such as through pre-recycling.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
That is the question. There are different approaches to that. Some of it will depend on the built environment. I live in a tenement flat. In such places, we are not going to have room for multiple different boxes. However, in East Lothian, there is an excellent separation scheme, and there is good evidence that separation by the householders works in that type of built environment.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
That is an interesting question. Certainly, reporting on food waste and surplus is helpful to us in meeting our waste targets. We are currently off track for meeting our food waste targets. If we—not just the Government but industry—understand where waste and surpluses arise, that can signpost us to mechanisms for dealing with those matters.
As we have said, we did not include food in the proposed ban on the destruction of unsold goods; we are looking at just reporting. Once we have the data, the policy would need to consider how we can support industry in doing better. However, the evidence suggests that, once industry is clear on waste and surplus, reducing it in the first place and finding good use for it follows along naturally.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
That is what the meeting that I have arranged with Ewan MacDonald-Russell of the SRC is about. I have arranged to meet some of his members who already do such reporting to understand what good practice looks like, and then we will be able to develop the standards from that. There is no need to reinvent standards when there is already really good industry practice. About 60 companies in Scotland already do such reporting, so I want to understand what they already do and move forward with that best practice.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
Lorna Slater
Because the bill is largely a framework, it does not have any implications for the internal market act. However, Bob Doris is right that the enacting of some of its provisions may have such implications.
The single-use cup charges are substantially different from the deposit return scheme. The deposit return scheme covered items that cross borders—imported goods and things that are carried across the border between Scotland and England. The single-use cup charge is for someone who is physically in Scotland selling an item to someone who is physically in Scotland. No border crossings are involved. We therefore believe that we can draft the legislation for single-use cup charges in a way that does not affect or come into contact with the internal market act and would therefore not require an exemption.
I ask Ailsa Heine to explain our thinking on whether matters around the reporting of the disposal of unsold goods might require an exemption to the internal market act.