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 2588 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I will move on, but I might come back to Mark Hull in a minute. I want to ask about onshore wind. We did not discuss that much with the first panel of witnesses. Morag Watson, how do you think the onshore wind target will be delivered? Are we looking at using existing sites that have already been through planning or those that have been loitering in the planning system for some time? Are we looking at repowering? Is it a mixture of both?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I would like to bring in Mark Hull at this point, followed by Aileen McLeod.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I will come to Stuart Haszeldine and then to the rest of the panel.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I want to pursue that point a little. Clare Lavelle talked about a bucket of flexible technologies that can be deployed—they are dispatchable technologies. Is there a route to market for each of those? You mentioned pumped storage, thermal generation, which could involve CCS, and battery technologies. Is there an effective route to market for all of those, or are some far from market rather than near market?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I want to come back in on dispatchable electricity and some of the challenges in securing a route to market. I will perhaps start with Morag Watson, and if other witnesses want to come in, that will be fine. In particular, I want to ask you about pumped storage hydro and any other technologies with which there are issues in establishing a clear route to market at the moment.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
Scott Mathieson or Aileen McLeod, do you want to come in on pumped hydro or any other issues around dispatchable technologies?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
That is great. I am sure we will keep coming back to those themes.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
We will come back to hydrogen in a bit more depth later. I will go to Emily Rice.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 16 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
That was very useful, and it brings me on to the next topic, which is your impression of how the common frameworks are working. This week in Parliament there was some scrutiny of the resources and waste common framework. I listened with interest to a Scottish Government civil servant, who explained that the approach is very evidence based. I would not say that it is completely politics-free, but it feels like an iterative framework that considers evidence on issues such as exemptions around the deposit return scheme or single-use plastics. What are your overall impressions of common frameworks right now? Is there enough transparency? Will common frameworks be put under pressure by individual issues that are coming out of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 or, indeed, the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 16 March 2023
Mark Ruskell
I want to follow up on the points around the culture. The issue was raised during last week’s committee meeting. We have been quite focused in this inquiry on looking at the formal consent mechanisms of the Sewel convention. We noticed that there are references in the evidence that you submitted to consultation entering legislation. To what extent are there good examples of Governments going beyond formal consent mechanisms and consultation—whatever form that might take—and working together in areas where there may be or has been co-design? I am not sure who would like to start. Akash, you are on my screen, so maybe you could start, and then we can work backwards.