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 1203 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
Just mix it all up, please.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
It is the importation aspect that gets me. We are talking a lot about energy security. Let us look at this in layman’s terms. We have the North Sea basin producing crude. You are refining that crude into various products.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
That is my point. Do we need to import as much crude, and cannot we utilise the North Sea basin and what it is producing to a greater degree? I recognise that there are different types of crude and all the rest of it—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
I am sorry to interrupt, but one reason why I asked the question is that this is not just about Scotland. It is also about the set-up of the refineries in the rest of the UK and even in the Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp triangle that Petroineos talked about. What is the situation in the north-west of Europe at the moment? How old are the refineries and what are their capabilities?
We recognise that oil and gas will still have some part to play in the future—a significant part, in some instances—and it would be much better to deal with that here than to import from some of the more modern refineries in the middle east and China that have been mentioned, not only from the carbon footprint point of view, but also from the energy security point of view. We have to look at the issue holistically. I will ask the UK Government those questions when it comes to the committee.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
Yes, there is quite a lot.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
We have got a very short period of time. Summarise both very quickly, because I have more questions, as you would imagine.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
Why not manufacture SAF here?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
Just give us a brief summary. What bothers me about how you are doing things at the moment is that there may be a future impact on confidence in moving some of these projects forward.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
I think that we could go on for quite some time about the competitive international market. From an energy security point of view, there have to be changes to that market. To reduce our overall carbon footprint, there have to be changes to that market, as well.
What I am driving at is that we should, from an energy security point of view, be utilising the North Sea basin to the max to save on importing crude and product. Would not it be better to utilise the pipeline from Forties to Kinneil more? Would it be beneficial for Petroineos if the UK Government, in particular, looked at what could be done to help with energy security by investing in it? I am well aware of the 2013 rescue plan, which led to a £9 million grant from the Scottish Government and £125 million of loan security from the UK Government. Is it time to look at security, and loan security, in relation to future energy security and reducing the carbon footprint?
10:15Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Kevin Stewart
The previous panel, particularly Mr Pritchard, was keen to stress that the announcement will have no impact on the plans for the Scottish cluster and the Acorn project. Is that your understanding? How will the Scottish Government continue to scrutinise the matter to ensure that that is the case?