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
Meeting of the Commission
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
[Inaudible.]—instead of just saying, “We haven’t got the time to do this”, say, “Okay, how do we do this in a more efficient or productive way? How do we marshal ourselves in a way that can deliver benefits and reduce pressure?”
Meeting of the Commission
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
So, you could go north of 80 per cent but not up to 100 per cent. Is that quite a blind measurement? Should we be looking at something a bit more detailed within that, given the nature of the audits?
Meeting of the Commission
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Organisations are now having to consider what they should move towards in the medium to long term, and they are having to make final decisions on leases. I am interested in what your staff and your trainees think about that. What kind of workplace do they want to work in?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
I will move on to the UK’s Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. We are now aware of the timescale and of the Scottish Government’s concerns about schedule 1 and the list of retained EU laws that are proposed to be revoked. What are your comments on the laws in schedule 1? What is your overall impression of the bill?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Okay—thanks.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
My understanding is that, in the past, there has been a memorandum of understanding between the Scottish Government and the Ministry of Defence on a range of areas, most notably environmental compliance, habitats regulations, environmental management and that side of things. Obviously, this strays more into health and safety. It is clear that there is environmental compliance in the Ministry of Defence, but scrutinising that is pretty hard. This is another example of that. Such examples come up from time to time.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Great. I will go back to the points that Phil Raines raised around critical detail, which was a feature of the UK CCC’s comments. Can you give us a bit more explanation? When it comes to the individual policies listed in the climate change plan, will it be really clear what the expected reduction in emissions will be, and what underlying modelling and assumptions have been used? In previous climate change plans it has been almost impossible to see what is going on behind the assumptions, particularly because of the use of the TIMES model. Previous cabinet secretaries have said that it is incredibly complex and they cannot explain it because it is a big computer model.
How clear will the plan be to people looking through it, in particular for sectors that will have to make quite big reductions in emissions and respond to the opportunities around heat and other areas?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
It is something of a relief that we are now looking at only nine pieces of legislation in schedule 1 rather than, potentially, 4,000. That would have given this committee quite a job to do, as well as the Government.
The UK Government proposes to revoke the entire national air pollution control programme. What are the Scottish Government’s particular concerns about the loss of that legal air quality framework?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
So the plan will just go.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Mark Ruskell
Okay. Am I right that its use will be phased out by 2025 anyway?