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 1046 contributions
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
Hmm.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
I have set out why I cannot publish it. There will be a debate about that—and you, convener, will perhaps hold a different view on it than I do—but I am not willing to put the yard at a competitive disadvantage or jeopardise its ability to compete for future orders.
The work that Teneo did went into a substantial amount of detail. It worked with the yard to ensure that all potential permutations on risks to the contract were considered, particularly on 802. It was able to give advice off the back of that. The work involved more than just looking at numbers on a spreadsheet or comparing costs; it examined the processes that are in place at the yard. It is well recognised that Teneo is an international expert in the field, and the advice that it has provided has given me assurance that I was able to take the correct decision in issuing written authority to see the completion of 801 and 802.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Neil Gray
I am happy to take the question and perhaps respond in writing, convener.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Neil Gray
Clear damage has been done to Scotland’s economy by decisions that have been taken that were outwith our control. Brexit has had a major impact on Scotland’s economy—its impact has been greater than that of the Covid pandemic. The UK Government’s mini budget, which was delivered by Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss, has also had a devastating impact.
The key risks to Scotland’s economy come from areas that are outwith our control. We are doing what we can to mitigate those by providing increased business support and by looking at where we can maximise growth and job opportunities—for example, through the entrepreneurial tech scalers network that I mentioned.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Neil Gray
The better Ferguson performs, the more likely it is to return to private ownership. If interested parties come forward to talk to the Government or our agencies, we will take that interest seriously and do what we can to ensure that the yard is returned to private ownership as quickly as possible, as a commercial going concern.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Neil Gray
It is very important. We have more than 1,000 GlobalScot members. Earlier this year, Mr Robertson outlined the importance of the GlobalScot network in meeting business, academic and other needs. When I was in Japan, I was able to meet one of our newest recruits to the network, operating across Japan, America and Europe. They give us incredibly strong contacts and advocate for Scotland, so we should utilise them more, not less.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Neil Gray
I will bring in Gary Gillespie.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Neil Gray
I will bring in Colin Cook at this point. I do not know the current value off the top of my head.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Neil Gray
Yes, absolutely. Ms Hyslop and I spoke about some of that yesterday. We discussed the need to ensure that we have a strong domestic supply chain to feed our offshore wind opportunities. We will continue to do what we can to make sure that that is brought forward.
I will bring in the chief economist to supplement that and give more detail.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 10 May 2023
Neil Gray
Thank you very much indeed, convener. I also thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to be here today to share the Government’s priorities in my portfolio area.
The impacts of the cost crisis, the pandemic, Brexit and fiscal instability resulting from United Kingdom Government decisions have brought untold damage to our economy, with persistent high inflation and unprecedented drops in living standards. Coupled with the climate and nature emergency, these crises have exposed fundamental weaknesses in the current economic system, and that backdrop underlines the need to transform our economy into one that is resilient and which prioritises wellbeing—an economy that serves people, not the other way round.
As we transition to a wellbeing economy, we will embed equality, inclusion and human rights in everything that we do. I am committed to the First Minister’s three interlinked missions of growing a fairer and greener economy, seizing the opportunities of net zero and creating better communities.
At the heart of a wellbeing economy will be economic growth for a purpose—that is, to drive improved living standards, promote wellbeing, reduce poverty and deliver sustainable high-quality public services—through harnessing and combining the economic power and opportunity of Scotland’s rich renewable energy resources.
The skills and talents of our people and businesses will be critical to achieving that. We will work closely with the private sector and the public sector, locally, nationally and UK-wide, and we will engage directly with communities and partners in the third sector.
Working with my Cabinet colleagues, we will deliver our national strategy for economic transformation, with a sharp focus on policies and actions that have the greatest potential to grow and change Scotland’s economy, expand the tax base to fund excellent public services and make people’s lives better. That will require a new approach to the Government’s relationship with business, so at the First Minister’s request, I will engage widely with business leaders to develop and agree with the private sector a new deal for how we will work with business to deliver a growing economy that increases wellbeing.
In the First Minister’s prospectus, I have laid out my priorities for what I want to deliver over the next three years, and you will no doubt want to hold me to account on them. Those priorities include: more people being in work; more people earning at least the real living wage and a narrowing of the gender pay gap; more business creation and more businesses growing to scale; increased investment in productive assets; internationally competitive clusters of excellence, including in green technologies, health and life sciences, digital and advanced manufacturing; greater regional and local economic empowerment, including through our programme of community wealth building; more growth in exports; and more high-quality inward investment.
A just transition for our energy sector is, arguably, the biggest opportunity that we have. We have a huge opportunity to establish Scotland as an exporter of green hydrogen to Europe, and analysis shows that, overall, the number of low-carbon jobs in energy production could rise to 77,000 by 2050. The potential can be seen in the ScotWind offshore leasing round, which has already delivered more than £750 million in revenues and will bring billions of pounds of investment into the Scottish supply chain and the wider economy. Indeed, the recent announcement that the Japanese company Sumitomo Electric Industries will be coming to Scotland to build a cable manufacturing plant demonstrates the strength of investors’ confidence in our net zero economy vision.
I look forward to discussing some of those points with the committee in greater detail, and I appreciate the opportunity that you have given me to set out my stall.