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 1193 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
Adrian Gillespie said that the south harbour at Aberdeen should do us a turn for decades. I hope that it is centuries. After all, Aberdeen Harbour Board is the oldest company in these islands—it was founded in 1136.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
My understanding is that hemp was grown to a huge degree in the middle ages. It sooks up carbon dioxide.
I turn to Stuart Black, who does not have to talk about hemp.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
You have all talked about the pressures, and Ms Morrison-Ross talked about partnership. This is a very brief question for you all. How do you share resources? What do you do to co-operate and collaborate with each other to ensure that costs are lowered?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
Maybe the witnesses could supply us with more detail on the shared backroom costs, because it would be my expectation that many of the things that you are doing could be done on a shared basis rather than each organisation doing something separately. It would be good if we could get further details on that shared agenda on backroom costs.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
More of that, please.
I think that all of you have mentioned hydrogen, which, obviously, has huge opportunities for us in Scotland, particularly in the export market to places such as Germany. We have our hydrogen strategy, and we already have some expertise in Scotland, in respect of transport in Aberdeen, in my own neck of the woods.
Does what are you doing fit in with the hydrogen strategy? Are you speaking to other experts about the formulation of your future investments? What needs to be done differently to make those future investments easier?
11:15Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I think that we do.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I have a few quick questions.
There has been an emphasis on the supply chain. One thing that we can do is change supply chains and stop imports. Let me give you an example of where that can be done and where we can take real opportunity from academic research that is being done in Scotland.
I think that Adrian Gillespie mentioned vertical farming. Obviously, that is a growing area. Berry farming is already huge in Scotland. We import a huge amount of coir, which is a coconut product, for vertical farming and berry farming. Meanwhile, academic research on the use of hemp is going on at the Rowett institute in particular.
How can we make sure that that academic research becomes a reality? What can you do to influence those changes in supply chains to ensure that we import less? That is much better from a net zero point of view, and it gives the opportunity for growth in Scotland.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I have a question for Jane Morrison-Ross and Stuart Black because you have both mentioned—others have, too—the lack of housing stopping growth. As a former housing minister, it annoyed me greatly that some of the councils in the areas that SOSE and Highlands and Islands Enterprise cover did not meet their planning assumptions, which meant that I had to take that resource away and give it elsewhere.
In those discussions with local authorities about the housing needs to boost the economy in certain places and to boost sustainable growth, do they listen to you or are you largely ignored?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
I have a number of quick questions, but I can go after Maggie Chapman.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 4 October 2023
Kevin Stewart
It would be interesting to hear more about that. If you could send me the detail, that would be wonderful.