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 2643 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
Further to the previous question, I know that Transport Scotland is responsible for procurement of trains, and I note that, in relation to the decarbonisation programme, there has been quite a lot of concern about the continual use of high-speed trains on the ScotRail network, not just from a carbon perspective, but from an air pollution perspective and, as the unions have highlighted, a safety perspective, too. When it looks at such big procurements—that is, the big leasing of trains over a number of years—how does Transport Scotland take air quality into account? Is that baked into the process? After all, it is clearly an area where Transport Scotland is responsible.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
SEPA has section 85 powers and enforcement powers, but we also heard evidence that it is involved in local air quality management groups on the ground. Do you see that role as important? If SEPA is involved in developing plans on the ground, do you see the potential for conflict? SEPA obviously has expertise and can give scientific advice, but it is also an enforcement agency. What should SEPA’s role be in the future? Do you see a conflict?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
A number of members are interested in monitoring. I am aware that there is a current Scottish Government review into provision of data monitoring. To go back to the vulnerable people in our society who could be most affected by poor air quality—even poor air quality that is compliant with legal limits—is there an understanding of what proportion of schools and hospitals are currently covered in Scotland by air quality monitoring? What investment might be needed to ensure that all the appropriate schools and hospitals are covered?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
Would you expect local authorities to continually update their action plans if there were some significant change such as, say, a new agreement being struck with a local bus company or a new LEZ being brought in? Would you expect them not to wait five years and, instead, work with stakeholders and produce something on an iterative basis? Who would ensures that that sort of thing was happening?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
That is very disciplined of you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
My final question is about local development plans. They are obviously on a continual rolling cycle of revision and development. Did you look at whether LDPs are broadly compliant with the air quality limits that we have? Are there any concerns around that process about how they are developed?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
Alongside numerous UK Climate Change Committee reports, the Friends of the Earth report shows us that, without decisive action to reduce the number of cars on the roads, we will not achieve our legally binding targets, which this Parliament voted for. Does the transport minister agree that traffic demand management measures are an essential tool to reduce transport emissions and raise revenue? Will he provide an update on what correspondence ministers have had with the UK Government on the need for such measures?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
It has been an interesting evidence session. I go back to the points that were made about community planning partnerships. I am interested in exploring their role in other forms of partnership and in strategically organising and delivering place-based approaches. I was struck by what Kirsty Cumming said about there being a disparity in Scotland in the way that CPPs incorporate culture and cultural organisations in their planning and articulate cultural outcomes. I was interested in what Billy Garrett said about the value of social prescribing and how partnership working is perhaps spreading into health and social care partnerships, and I was also interested in Rebecca Coggins’s point about how we have to work sideways and then up to access the more strategic CPPs.
Can you distil anything from all that in terms of your experiences, what works well with community planning partnerships and how the cultural sector gets its value and its voice into those objectives? Do we need to consider other parts of the architecture of local strategic planning beyond that? It is a big picture, and I am aware through what you have said this morning that culture touches on many different things from community regeneration to social care to everything else. Are CPPs the best vehicle to do that, or should we consider other ways?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
That was very insightful.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 20 April 2023
Mark Ruskell
Across the country, I can see DRS facilities appearing in supermarkets, sorting centres being built and hundreds of jobs being created. With over 95 per cent of the market for cans and bottles already signed up, businesses and the minister should be congratulated on getting the UK’s first deposit return scheme so close to being launched. Given the huge private sector investment that has already been delivered in our communities, what has the reaction from those businesses been to the continued failure of the UK Government to grant an exemption from the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020? [Interruption.]