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 740 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
That is quite strong language—a “lack of respect”. Do you think that the Scottish Government is just not listening to your concerns?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
Thank you.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
Good morning, gentlemen. I have some questions on what the Scottish Government is doing with its budget but, before I come to them, I will follow up on the previous discussion.
Marc Crothall mentioned some of the UK-wide pressures on the industry, such as VAT, interest rates and energy costs, but is there a specific Scottish angle? To contextualise it, I read a press report at the weekend from, I think, the Scottish Beer and Pub Association, which is the rival lobby group to Colin Wilkinson’s. According to its figures, pubs in Scotland are closing at twice the rate of those in England. I appreciate that there are UK-wide issues, which we have discussed, but are there specific Scottish issues that make the situation more difficult here?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
I will bring in Leon Thompson in a minute, but I will follow that up first. Some of these issues are not restricted to Scotland or the UK. Just before Christmas, I had a meeting with the German consul general, who said that, in Berlin, a lot of the restaurants are now shut two or three days a week because they cannot get the staff. There are issues that go beyond Scotland and the UK, but I am trying to focus on whether there are specifically Scottish angles here.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
I have a specific follow-up question on business rates. You have all made the plea for the 75 per cent business rates relief that applies south of the border to be replicated in the Scottish budget. The Fraser of Allander Institute has said that that would be relatively more expensive in Scotland due to the different structure of the industry here. As I understand it, there is a cap that applies above a certain level in England and, because there are more larger businesses in England, more businesses hit that cap and do not get the relief. I am interested to get your reaction to that, given that, even if you were to take all the Barnett consequentials from that in the budget, it would still not be enough to fund the full 75 per cent relief for everybody in the sector.
10:00Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
Good morning, minister. Kevin Stewart just stole my question on sustainable aviation fuels, so I do not need to follow that up.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
Thanks very much for that.
Some of the community groups and the local authorities that we spoke to expressed concern about the role of SNIB as the key driver and the lack of engagement with it. Given that SNIB is intended to be an arm’s-length independent body, how will the Scottish Government ensure that it delivers on the fund’s objectives, if it also has an element of freedom of operation?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
The trajectory is not encouraging. There is £50 million this year, and that is going down to £12 million next year. Are you confident that you will get to £500 million?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
Good morning, minister. Colleagues have touched on the just transition fund, but I have a few more questions specifically on the fund and how it operates.
Some witnesses whom we have taken evidence from have told us that they are not clear what the fund’s objectives are or how it will be monitored and evaluated. How does the Scottish Government see the objectives of the fund, and how do you expect to monitor and evaluate how that money is being spent?
10:30Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Murdo Fraser
Another issue that came up a lot, particularly from the community groups, was that there was funding for capital but not for revenue. It means that, with projects intended to run for a period of years, it is difficult to find secure funding to sustain them. Are you conscious of that? Can anything be done in that space?