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: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
How do these rules align with or differ from the European Union ETS? Are there similar mechanisms around free allocations and rules within the EU ETS?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
Indeed.
The cabinet secretary mentioned the money for heat decarbonisation. She described what is in the level 4 budget figure, which is quite a big sum of around £360 million. However, the scope of the programmes that will sit underneath that is not very clear. I am not clear to what extent the £360 million meets the Government’s existing commitment on heat decarbonisation that it made several years ago. I am also not clear whether there is money underneath that budget line to develop supply chains, working with the industry.
Either now or after the evidence session, I am looking for a lot more detail as to what lies under that pretty chunky sum of money, whether we are on track to making homes warmer and cheaper to heat, and whether we are realising the amazing opportunities for people to come into the industry.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
I have quite a few questions, but I will keep them short and sweet.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
But you are not able to set that out at this point.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
You are not able to say where you think there might be more or less demand for individual programmes at this point in the year.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
I go back to my original question. Is there money and resource in the budget for supply chain development?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
Another issue that has been raised with us—this time by the Existing Homes Alliance—is the capacity of the Heat Network Support Unit. We have already talked about Government capacity, which has been a theme in our analysis of Government action on climate change. There is a call for that unit to have more resources so that we can start really rolling out heat networks at pace. We are all aware of the potential there, but it clearly needs an agency to make it happen and to build on some of the work that has been done around local authority and local heat and energy efficiency strategies.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
Is there new money there?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
My question on the back of that is around transparency. As you say, it is clear that there has been an assessment of whether a particular policy will result in a material change in carbon emissions, but, presumably, that could include absolutely every policy, so I am interested in where you draw the line on that. If there has been an initial assessment of whether policies will result in a material change, can that be made available? Is that publicly available?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Mark Ruskell
Yes.