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: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
Okay. Thank you, minister.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
Fergus Mutch, you are a member of Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce. What has been its relationship with SNIB, and is there enough transparency around access to funding?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
The just transition partnership told us that it was concerned about lack of transparency around the funding of projects. It raised concerns that there were no mechanisms for accountability to the representative bodies of the people of the area: the local authorities. Do you accept that that is a valid criticism?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
I have just one more question for Fergus Mutch. I do not know whether you saw the breaking news this morning. It looks as though the oil refinery at Grangemouth is likely to close by spring 2025. That would be a huge blow to Scotland’s industrial base. It currently accounts for 4 per cent of national gross domestic product and 8 per cent of our manufacturing base. Clearly, that will have a knock-on impact on the north-east economy. I appreciate that the news has just broken, but do you have any reflections on the impact that it will have on the businesses of your members and on the wider just transition debate?
12:00Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
My declaration relates to item 4 on the agenda. As a member of the cross-party group on building bridges with Israel, I visited Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in 2018. The cost of that was met by the embassy of Israel in the United Kingdom.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
I have some questions on the just transition fund. I will initially go to Mr Munro from the Scottish National Investment Bank. When the Scottish Government set up SNIB, a £2 billion fund was proposed to be paid over a number of years, and the just transition fund is £500 million. To be clear, is the £500 million additional to the £2 billion?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
I am concerned, minister, that you are founding your arguments on a statement in your legislative consent memorandum that is not sustainable, but let us move on to the substance of the issue, if we can.
There are many repressive regimes in the world. There are many countries in the middle east, for example, that have terrible track records when it comes to the rights of women, the LGBT community and religious minorities and that repress free speech. Countries such as Iran are particular examples of that, and countries such as China have deplorable human rights records. Are you aware of any campaigns to boycott, divest and sanction many of those countries?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
Which one?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
Right. I am just trying to get some precision on the dates that you are referring to.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Murdo Fraser
Thank you, convener. Yes, I have a particular interest in fly-tipping. I have a member’s bill in preparation on the issue and I welcome in particular section 10 of the bill, which places an enhanced duty of care on the householder.
I will ask two questions, convener, but I will ask them at the same time, if that is all right. A lot of the questions that I would have asked have already been covered.
I will direct my first question to Councillor Macgregor from COSLA. Fixed penalty notices currently sit at £200, and I think that we all accept that is nowhere near the level that it needs to be to act as a deterrent. In its strategy—although it is not in the bill—the Scottish Government is suggesting increasing the penalty to £500. Is that enough, and is there some mechanism whereby the money raised could be recycled into greater enforcement? How practical is it to try to ring fence money raised from fixed penalty notices to deal with the resource issue?
My second question goes back to what Drew Murdoch was just saying. When I ran my consultation on fly-tipping, one of the biggest issues that people raised with me was how restrictions on access to recycling centres were one of the drivers of fly-tipping. We have seen councils, usually because of budgetary conditions, reducing opening hours in recycling centres, closing them entirely or introducing queuing or appointment systems. That is not in any way an excuse for people fly-tipping, but you can see why—human nature being what it is—if you make it more difficult for people to legally dispose of material, they are more likely to fly-tip. To what extent is that a factor?