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 3343 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
We have the new-build heat standards, so we already have regulations in that space. With existing homes, however, I was worried that compulsions would mean that people could not afford to do the work. There is massive expense associated with it.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
Yes—of course.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
I am completely open to listening to how sectors can go further and faster. The vast majority of the people I know who have an air-source heat pump installed are happy with that. For some, it has been an absolute game changer. I have constituents who get in touch about things that have perhaps not been installed to the standard that they would have expected, but that is the same for any kind of work that is done in someone’s house.
I do not want to pre-empt what Ms McAllan is going to bring forward in the heat in buildings bill. I do not want to put words in the mouth of someone who is working very hard with us to make sure that the bill dovetails into the climate change plan. As with everything, if there were innovations or improvements in how things can get done that would make it more attractive for households to take on the technology, that would be great news. The market is growing, but I disagree that there would not be unintended consequences of compulsion on some of this.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
You will hear differing views on that, which I suppose brings us back to the point that I made to Sarah Boyack about collaboration with sectors. We need the right planting in the right place with the willing partners that we have. I have seen, in my constituency, well-managed planting on farms; indeed, it is often better managed than some of the not-so-well-managed pine plantations that we see, with indigenous trees alongside the production on those farms.
What we need to do—we are already doing it with the agriculture bill and the whole farm plan that Ms Gougeon leads on—is to work out how we value the work that is already done in farms and land management and to communicate the benefits of the types of planting that have been done for the bottom line and for the health of a farm. Recently, someone in the sector put it to me that some very small farms do not have the headspace to look beyond their production, because they are one or two-person businesses. We need to be able to assist those farmers to make decisions about what to do on their farm that is not onerous for them. I thought that that was a very good point.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
We think that we can go further. I will not be able to set you up with a lot of detail on that, because I need to discuss it—we are discussing it—ahead of the draft plan being laid. Mr Fairlie has responsibility for peatland restoration.
When I asked all the cabinet secretaries and ministers where they can go further, peatland restoration was one area in which there was Government agreement that we could do so. It is an area in which Scotland has an advantage. The geography of Scotland has an advantage. It is a double win: reducing the carbon leakage and producing carbon sinks.
The Climate Change Committee wants to see a lot of short and medium-term actions. The first carbon budget is really challenging because a lot of the action associated with peatland restoration will mean that carbon reductions come in the second, third and fourth carbon budgets.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
I am happy to be briefer, as long as people do not say, “Well, she never talked about this,” or, “She never talked about that.” I will try my best to be succinct.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
We have funding streams associated with industrial decarbonisation. The Scottish industrial energy transformation fund is a consistent budget line. At every budget opportunity, I will make the pitch for that to continue, and, given that we have a climate change plan that will be reliant on industrial decarbonisation, I may even pitch to ensure that that funding increases. We have also pledged £80 million to support the Acorn project, which will be fundamental in industrial decarbonisation through capturing the associated carbon, as will the Scottish cluster.
We are all familiar with project willow, which is the incentive to come into the Grangemouth industrial cluster, and with the efforts that Scottish Enterprise makes to attract low-carbon and emerging technologies to be based in Grangemouth. We have £25 million of Scottish Government money associated with that project, to help it to get to final investment decision status so that it can then access the money that has been pledged by the UK Government as part of the Grangemouth deal that both Governments have made.
There has been a lot of incentivisation. Government money being associated with low-carbon technologies is an incentive for companies to diversify.
The convener is asking me to keep it short, so I will leave it there.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
There is really interesting work happening in some of our cities on that—in Glasgow, in particular. The Scottish Government has given £1 billion of funding to councils in relation to waste.
We also need to factor in the fact that additional money is coming from the extended producer responsibility packaging regulations from the UK. There will be funding associated with that, although it will decline over time, because it is based on the levels of waste. It will be exciting to see what local authorities can do in addition. They will have the funds associated with the EPR, but as a result of that additional funding, they will be able to be a lot more innovative in that space to reduce the waste in what they do in the circular economy.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
Phil Raines has helpfully offered to come in on that point—
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Gillian Martin
We will set out our figures when we publish the climate change plan.