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
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
But, clearly, the clock is ticking when it comes to getting the contract awarded by the end of the year, as was promised to the Parliament.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
That helps with understanding the context, although we knew on Monday, when the question was lodged, that we did not have a transport minister. That is a matter for the Scottish Government; perhaps the committee can pursue that separately.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
Can I follow up with the other question that I put to Mr Barn? We have gone through two new transport ministers, but when Jenny Gilruth was transport minister, she told Parliament at the beginning of the year that she hoped to make an announcement about the award of a contract for the Tomatin to Moy section by the end of this year. Mr Barn told us that, given the likely timescale, six months to award such a contract would be very tight. Are you in a position to tell us any more about the procurement process for that section?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
Right. To go back to the conversation that we have just had with Mr Ewing about the type of contract, are you proceeding on the basis of the existing contract, or are you looking to adjust that for the Tomatin to Moy section?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
Can you give us any indication of when you expect that to be done?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
It sounds as though there is still a lot of work to be done before you put it out to tender.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
Thank you, convener. I am particularly obliged to you for letting me in as I am not a member of the committee. I want to put a particular point to Mr Barn in this area. The petitioner made what I thought was a powerful comment earlier about the Tomatin to Moy section and the young man from Moray who tragically lost his life at Dalmagarry, just two weeks ago. We can only speculate what might have happened had progress been made on dualling that section instead of it being a single carriageway.
I just noticed that a Government-initiated question was lodged on Monday afternoon, in the name of Jim Fairlie. It reads:
“To ask the Scottish Government when the new procurement for the dualling of the A9 between Tomatin and Moy will commence”.
As you know, convener, a Government-initiated question is lodged when the Government wants to make an announcement to Parliament and it asks a back bencher to lodge a question that enables that to be done. Curiously, however, this question was not answered on Monday, and it has now been withdrawn, which suggests that an announcement might be imminent, but for some reason it is not yet ready to be made. That is a very curious issue, which perhaps we can explore further with Transport Scotland when it appears before the committee. However, as Mr Barn is here, I wanted to ask him whether he is aware of any moves by Government to advance the bidding process on that particular section, given that something appears to be happening in the background.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
I have one follow-up question to that. If the intention was to award the contract by the end of this year, what is the reasonable last date at which a contract could have been put out to bid?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Murdo Fraser
We are very tight for time.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Murdo Fraser
Good morning, Professor Morris and Professor Evans.
You will remember, Professor Morris, that when we saw you back in September 2022, the session was plagued by internet problems, so it is good to see you in person. At that point, you had published your interim report, and we asked you whether you had had a response from the Scottish Government. The answer was that you had not, although you were hoping to get one. Has there since been one that you can tell us about?