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 728 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
My questions follow on from Kevin Stewart’s line of questioning. There are currently six refineries across the UK. We understand that the Grangemouth refinery is set to close, but we are not aware that there are plans to close the others. As we heard from the previous panel, that means that customers in Scotland who are currently supplied via Grangemouth will have to source supplies from elsewhere—it might be elsewhere in the UK or elsewhere in the world—although we will still produce oil and gas from the North Sea basin. Does the Scottish Government have any concerns about energy security, given that we will lose the capacity to refine crude oil in Scotland?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
All right. Thank you.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
Ultimately, it is a Scottish Government decision to accept any bid.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
At what point do you advise the Scottish Government that a bid has come in? Is that done routinely, or is it done only when you receive a bid that you think is credible and appropriate? I ask the question because clearly there is a lot of public money tied up in the airport, so you would expect the Scottish Government to want to be sighted on bids that are coming in.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
I have a couple of fairly short questions to follow up on Colin Smyth’s line of questioning about potential sales. Can you explain to us how the credibility of bids is determined? Is that done by you or is it done by the Scottish Government?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
What gap in knowledge or oversight was identified that led to the establishment of SCAD?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
Okay. Finally, is there any potential conflict of interests, given that if the airport is sold you will, I presume, no longer be in the positions that you currently hold?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
I have a couple of questions to follow up on Colin Smyth’s line of questioning around a potential sale. We discussed with the previous panel members their role as the management in assessing bids. What is the relationship between them and the strategic commercial assets division in the Government? Who assesses a bid?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
Okay. We have loans outstanding to the taxpayer of £43.4 million. Are there circumstances in which you would accept a bid that is less than that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
Murdo Fraser
The Scottish Government set up a strategic commercial assets division to manage its investments in private enterprises such as Glasgow Prestwick Airport Ltd. Will that make any practical difference to the way in which investment in the airport is managed?