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 692 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
Absolutely. In response to Mr Doris, I mentioned how all those aspects of an enormous piece of work are being looked at: the cost, the supply chain, the skills involved in the development of the scheme, the impact on the housing market and so on. A huge amount of work is being done on all that just now. We are moving to consultation, so that will be the point at which we will seek views on what is there and anything that the committee or anyone else thinks ought to be there.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
You made a good point about the difference in requirements between urban and rural Scotland. It is ever thus with transport. We have to understand the requirements and respond to them, and they will be different in rural and urban Scotland, as they are in Glasgow and London.
Alison Irvine might want to comment but, as you rightly pointed out, some of the funding is currently being used for scoping, planning and development, with installations expected to begin from 2024. It is about understanding the needs of different areas, and local authorities are very well placed to speak to that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
It is my intention, with a backstop of autumn this year, to set out next steps on the dualling programme. My principal objective is the quickest and most successful procurements that I can manage, ensuring value for money. All those strands are currently occupying a lot of time across the transport team.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
I think that they were, for one key reason: just transition absolutely is oil and gas, but it is also broader than that. The climate change brief is a cross-cutting role across Government and so too is just transition, because for every decision that we make in the climate change space, which—as I have narrated today—is an enormous change agenda, it is very important that the just transition principles sit side by side with that and follow the progress on climate change throughout Government and everything that we are doing more broadly.
I think that it is the right thing to do. Just transition is not oil and gas—that is a huge part of it, but it is also agriculture, marine and transport, and everything that is encompassed in the climate change brief.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
Alison Irvine could add a spot, if that would be helpful, or we can come back to you in writing.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
I clarify that my colleague Angus Robertson leads on the Scottish Government’s approach to oversight of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill and the relations between us and the UK Government on that.
First, we had to undertake an enormous piece of work to find everything that had not been listed. Now that I know what is potentially under threat in my area, it is about senior civil servants and then me, in the case of a refusal, making the case for why things should not be in the schedule. However, I do not lead on the Scottish Government’s response to the REUL bill at large. It would be for Angus Robertson to answer your question on that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
There is a balance. My officials and I have discussed the question, too. I say from the outset that, when I presented the 1.2 percentage point miss, I was clear that we thought that that had happened because of a rebound in transport emissions following a year of lockdown in 2020, as you said, and because we had had one of the coldest winters in a decade, which meant that emissions from heating our homes were higher.
I have been thinking about whether transport had largely settled in 2022—about whether people were not using transport because of a fear of Covid or whether a behavioural change has started to set in because people’s need to travel to work and their lifestyles have changed. The answer is that I do not know the extent to which that return to transport emissions will be seen into 2022. I think that there will be some. We might see some aviation emissions rebound in that.
However, I would also like to think that a positive that came out of the plethora of incredible negatives of the pandemic was that change in people’s lifestyles; for example, in how they travel to work. I hope that we will hold on to some of those changes in the 2022 results. All the time, we seek to introduce policies that will make changes now and will be borne out in future targets.
09:45Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
Yes. I aim to lay a draft in Parliament in November.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
The UK Government’s position is that it has declined to remove it from the schedule. When we raised the matter at director general level, the UK Government declined the request and, as far as we understand it, it has no plan to replace the plan. It is now for me to escalate the matter to my ministerial counterparts in the UK Government and to make the case very clearly as to why we believe that it should be removed from the schedule.
I am reluctant to stray into this because, as I said, Angus Robertson is leading on it. As you mentioned, it is a joint piece of work. However, as far as I aware, we do not have any tool to change what the UK proposes in the schedule. I do not think that there is a mechanism that Scottish ministers could use to do that.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Màiri McAllan
I do not know what agreement you are talking about. If you can give me more information, I will be glad to talk about it.