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: 27 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Are there issues around transport governance—who is making decisions and who is implementing projects—that need further consideration?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Thanks. I will move on briefly to look at nature-based solutions. Jackie Dunbar might be interested in this area as well. The climate and nature emergencies run alongside each other, but solutions to climate change can come from investment in natural capital within council areas.
Are there ways in which the Scottish Government could enhance support to local authorities to do more of that work, to consider adaptation, to consider investment or to bring forward investable models so that private capital can come in as well? It feels as though we often talk about climate over here and nature over there, but some of the solutions, the tools, the planning and the investment that are required feel as though they are in a similar space. What can we learn from the work on climate when implementing nature-based solutions and improving natural capital?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Cabinet secretary, I want to go back to what you said about the regulatory framework for local authorities on climate. It links in with what you were saying, minister, about developing the new deal for local authorities. Do local authorities need more duties within that framework? My impression is that some local authorities are very much focused on their own corporate emissions and doing what they can to reduce emissions within that scope but thinking less about the emissions from the wider area and about place making. Do more duties need to be placed on local authorities?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
The world is changing. Earlier, you showed us the impressive stack of written communication. When I was out canvassing earlier in the year, I saw a lot of that communication—reminders and leaflets—drifting around stairwells next to pizza delivery menus, unfortunately.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
My election literature was put through the door.
I am interested to know about the social media tools. Was there a campaign on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram? What was the effectiveness of that? Were there different types of messages? On terrestrial television, I saw a lot of community-minded messages about planning for education in schools. That appeals to me, but there might be different messages for different groups, particularly people who are not permanent residents in communities and might move on after a year or two.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
I wonder whether, at this stage, there are particular lessons to be learned about the hard-to-count groups. Those include more transient populations such as students, those with English as a second language and those living in particular types of housing. Reflecting on what you said earlier about marketing—there was a lot of marketing out there—can you tell us whether that marketing was targeted at those groups? What lessons can be learned about how it could be improved in future?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
The evidence this morning has been powerful. From it, I have taken the sense that the world has already changed and that, if organisations have to change, there is no sense of failure, but that there needs to be that headroom and support to enable that change to happen. I am sure that other sectors, including health, are having to think about how they respond to the new world as well.
Julia Amour, Janet Archer and Kirsty Cumming mentioned the transient visitor levy. There is a commitment from the Government to deliver that in legislation during the next year. What has the conversation been locally about that? Clearly, it will be a discretionary power that councils can use. What they can spend it on may also be discretionary, although there is a strong argument that it needs to be put into culture and wellbeing.
I do not know how that local conversation is panning out. Obviously, there will be some dissenting voices on the use of such a levy—perhaps from parts of the hospitality sector, who may not understand the benefits of how it could be used. I am interested to know how those early conversations are going, because whether the levy gets used is going to be pretty critical, including to the extra funds that could be brought in.
I see Julia Amour is nodding.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Are similar conversations happening in relation to your networks across Scotland, Kirsty Cumming and Janet Archer, or is this simply an Edinburgh conversation at the moment?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how it is addressing court backlogs that are reportedly leading to young people being held on remand for longer than 140 days in young offenders institutions. (S6O-01353)
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Mark Ruskell
Yesterday, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, called on countries to “tax the windfall profits” of oil and gas companies, to support people who are struggling with the costs crisis and to support communities that are suffering immense loss and damage from climate change, around the world. Does the cabinet secretary agree with his proposal?