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 693 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Brian Whittle
I have nothing to declare.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Brian Whittle
Callum Chomczuk mentioned net zero housing and the ambitions around reducing our carbon output through housing, including work on new builds and the retrofitting of 1 million homes, which is a target that has had to be dropped. We are 22,500 tradespeople short of the number of workers that we need in order to hit those 2030 targets, and we are dealing with a reducing budget. Should we be considering taking the capital that we have and addressing homelessness and the lack of housing by incentivising builders to build new affordable green housing? It seems to me that the budget is being spread so thinly that no targets are being met. Are we taking too much of a scattergun approach?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Brian Whittle
So, the question is: should we be focusing on developing green, energy-efficient and affordable new-build homes, instead of taking a widespread approach?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Brian Whittle
My question will follow on from what has been said. I am concerned about the limits of 6 and 12 per cent and the fact that the proposed system will be problematic for the understanding of tenants and landlords, as has been mentioned. It is my understanding that, although there was a rent cap of 3 per cent, when a tenant moved out and another tenant moved in, that caused a huge hike in rents. If we go to adjudication and we find that there has been a huge rent hike in comparable properties—we know that increases have been 14 per cent on average, even though it is supposed to be only 3 per cent—that suggests to me that rents for those properties that have changed hands have gone up by 13, 14 or sometimes 15 per cent. If the way in which we adjudicate rent increases takes into account comparable properties, are we causing ourselves huge problems?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Brian Whittle
I will be as brief and concise as I possibly can be. We have touched on how the housing market has to deal with inward migration. Migration within country is also an issue. We have a significant issue of migration from rural to urban areas. The extent of the migration from west to east is a surprise to me. Obviously, that situation has an impact, because it puts pressures on housing.
Specifically in rural areas—I will come to Jane Wood in a minute, because she talked about SMEs, which are the predominant house builders in rural communities—that migration is leading to a reduction in the ability to deliver services, which means that fewer people stay in those areas. It seems to be an ever-decreasing circle. Does the housing strategy take that into account? One of the key issues that has been mentioned a lot is the lack of appropriate housing to keep people in rural communities.
I am looking at Maureen Chalmers for an answer to that.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Brian Whittle
I am an MSP for South Scotland.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Brian Whittle
As I mentioned, builders in rural communities are predominantly SMEs. All those issues are connected. Connectivity is hugely important, but there is also a cost associated with building in rural areas. Do we need to examine how we incentivise builders? At the end of the day, they need to turn a coin. Should we incentivise them to build in rural areas?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Brian Whittle
Unless anybody else wishes to add something, I am happy to leave it there.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Brian Whittle
Good morning, minister. Who can argue with legislation that is aimed at “reducing harm for consumers”? I do not think that anybody would argue with that.
Nevertheless, my issue with the consumer duty relates to consideration of the benefit to consumers of “reducing harm”. How would you define that in relation to a public authority? For example, I am aware of a couple of mental health organisations in the third sector that are having to close their doors because local councils have withdrawn funding. That will definitely not reduce harm. Community programmes in sport, music and art are closing—all those things are being curtailed. That is not reducing harm. Local public procurement of food for schools and hospitals is being squeezed. That is not reducing harm.
I therefore have two concerns. First, how do you define “reducing harm”? Secondly, how would you enforce that aspect of the duty. You could not go to a council and say, “You can’t shut that service just because of budget constraints, because that will cause harm.” How will you define what that means?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Brian Whittle
Colin Smith, let us talk about food procurement. We have had these conversations previously. I did some work on the issue when I first came into the Parliament. God—it was nearly eight years ago now. We looked at where food was procured from in all 32 authorities, and it was staggering to see where everything came from. You mentioned ice cream coming from Belgium. We found that there were root vegetables and potatoes coming from Ireland. The one that the press jumped on was chicken coming from Thailand, for some obscure reason.
It was not a very good picture back then, even though some local authorities, such as East Ayrshire Council, were procuring 75 per cent of their food locally. Is the picture any better now? I do not see much improvement, but, from your perspective, has it improved?