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 2616 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
Yes—unless other witnesses wish to offer insights.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
Going back to the deputy convener’s questions on the environmental court, the case for that and our lack of compliance with Aarhus, how do you see the debate moving forward? Lloyd, you mentioned, I think, that in the previous parliamentary session there was a round table on environmental governance that was chaired by Campbell Gemmell. It feels like we have been going around the issue for some time. If you see a way forward, what does it look like? There have been calls in evidence for a further governance review. I am interested in how that would be different from what we have seen coming through and what the Government has already conducted.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
All done.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
It has been an interesting evidence session. I was just reflecting on the number of constituents who write to me every week with concerns about the quality of services. They write not just about whether the services are running but about whether they are running on time or whether buses are breaking down.
I want to ask you about the conditionality applied to public sector funding. Jenny Gilruth, as a previous Minister for Transport, announced a review of bus sector funding, part of which was going to be a consideration of what conditionality could be applied. Obviously, we have the Traffic Commissioner for Scotland, who is able to hold some of the bus companies to account, but I am interested in hearing about the work that the Government has done to make the substantial investment in the bus sector every year conditional on some basic standards of service and improvements going forward.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
Do you think that conditionality needs to go beyond fair work to actual quality of delivery of services?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
I was going to ask a series of questions about individual cases, but the evidence that we have just heard has been useful in that regard.
I have two follow-up questions. Is there work that ESS has done recently in which you have batched together concerns that have come from individual cases, then made recommendations about changing systemic approaches to regulation? An example might be acoustic deterrent devices. Shivali Fifield mentioned the River Almond, where the system has perhaps not worked well. Are there areas where ESS has worked well by collating individual cases and pointing to systemic change?
My other question is for SEPA. I was struck by your submission, in which you talk about an increase in the number of complaints. In your view, is there an expectation among complainers that ESS will pick up a batch of complaints that come to SEPA and work to address systemic issues? Could you elaborate a little on that? I will be a bit startled if SEPA is saying that it is concerned about the number of complaints and how it will resource the work, and that that is a problem with the system, rather than it addressing its practice. I am interested to hear comments on both those issues.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
Okay. I appreciate that, and I appreciate your comments about the process.
Are there any other reflections on individual complaints and how they have been effectively addressed by ESS to drive systemic change, beyond the example of the River Almond?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
I was interested in the minister’s comments about the community bus fund. A modest amount of money has been allocated to it. Which local authorities are taking up the opportunity, particularly on the revenue side, to work on a business case and look at the options for franchising and municipalisation? Are they predominantly rural local authorities or urban local authorities? It would be useful to get a sense of how local authorities are responding to the money that is available and what work they are doing.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
I want to continue to discuss with you what your priorities might be in that discussion with Government. The committee has heard today, as we hear a lot, about the power of the creative sector and its ability to innovate and to tackle many societal issues, such as inclusion and placemaking. Some of the work of the creative sector during Covid, through culture camps and so on, has shown what that power is, yet many cultural organisations struggle to get funding from Creative Scotland. For example, Creative Stirling, which perhaps does not easily fit into any of your boxes for regularly funded organisations, is now in a very vulnerable funding position. It is clear that it could contribute towards a wide range of local and national government objectives if it could find an appropriate funding stream through Creative Scotland to enable it to continue.
I am therefore interested in what that conversation with Government now looks like. It is clear that you have an on-going difficult situation with the RFOs and their need for core funding, but there is also a potential that we need to unleash. As was demonstrated through our committee inquiry into culture in communities, we are waiting to change that model. We are waiting to see the cultural sector—the creative sector—bring in the changes that we need. However, it feels as though we are always on the cusp of something. Is this a point at which we need to start to fund some new models and to lean in to the innovation that is in our communities? Without such funding, is there a risk that that will disappear?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2024
Mark Ruskell
That feels like a space in which we could genuinely have synergy, if there were the will and the co-ordination to do that.