Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
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.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
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.
Search by MSP
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.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
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.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
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:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 1081 contributions
|
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
Good morning. I want to consider the issue of procurement policy. The circular economy strategy is an important part of being able to achieve the ambitions in the draft climate change plan to reduce emissions from waste. I would be interested in getting your views on how we could adapt or change our public procurement policy in a way that would help to strengthen the circular economy in order to support its development. Are specific measures being taken in public procurement to support the circular economy?
For example, in its evidence to the committee Highland Council said that the Scottish Government should mandate minimum recycling content in public procurement. It would be transformational if we were to do that across the public sector. Building on the point that Iain Gulland made, if we do things the right way and target the right areas, that could also have an economic benefit. Is there a role for public procurement policy, and would you like there to be specific measures within it to support the circular economy and drive greater use of recycled goods?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
I recognise that there are wider societal benefits from having something for free, but I am asking specifically about the draft climate change plan. As a policy on its own, you are saying that there is no evidence that it reduces car usage. Is that correct?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
Would, as the Highland Council has suggested, a mandated minimum level of recycled content in public procurement give a green light to the sector by saying, “Look—we expect you to push into that area, and we want to see innovation and opportunities being created”?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
Rachel Aldred, you also mentioned a range of evidence-based policy options that could be pursued. If we were the health committee, we would expect our health service to follow an evidence-based approach when taking actions to address a particular issue or particular conditions. In your view, why do you think that the transport side of the climate change plan does not necessarily include the evidence-based actions that are needed to reduce transport emissions?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
You talked about 600 vehicles. That must be a very small percentage of the overall fleet in the UK. I would have thought that the percentage would be in single digits. Is that correct?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
Okay. That was helpful.
My final question is on moving freight from road to rail. I know that grants were available to encourage freight operators to make the shift to rail. I am conscious that there are limitations on the types of goods that can be put on to rail freight, but do you know exactly how many rail freight pathways on the UK rail network are not being utilised because of a lack of demand from industry to switch to using rail freight?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
I would have thought that, given your expertise in logistics, and given that we are trying to encourage people to put freight on to rail, it would be helpful to know what capacity is available but is not being utilised, and what we can do to try to incentivise its greater use. I know that there are limitations on the number of freight pathways on the rail network, but, if we have not quantified that and do not understand exactly how much capacity is available, it will be difficult to understand how much we might be able to incentivise people to make use of it.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
That would be very helpful. Thank you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
Moreover, if you target this in a particular way and, say, produce things that help to reduce our carbon footprint, it will have a wider environmental benefit.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Michael Matheson
I suspect that the whole issue around preventative spend goes back to the Christie commission and trying to make that long-term investment in order to get wider societal benefits. The problem is that, very often, the political cycle does not lend itself to that type of investment. I was struck by Rachel Aldred’s point about the need for long-term investment, which a couple of you have also made. The challenge that the Scottish Government will have is that it does not know what its budget will be next year, because it is, by default, set from the UK Government’s budget. That political process issue compromises some of those other issues.
That brings me to the question that I would like to ask Adrian Davis and Rachel Aldred. You do not feel that the transport provisions in the draft climate change plan are sufficient to achieve the reductions in transport emissions that are needed to tackle climate change. Adrian, you rattled off four examples of areas of transport in which we get good bang for our buck in relation to impact. You mentioned congestion charging, road reallocation and the enforcement of parking restrictions—I am sorry, but I missed the fourth example that you gave. If you feel that the transport provisions in the existing plan are insufficient and that there are clear policies that would, if implemented, have a marked impact, why do you think that those policies are not in the plan and the Government is not pursuing them?
