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 882 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
That actually lets me come on to my supplementary question in an even better way than I had imagined.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
Given your points about investing, ScotWind is a massive missed opportunity. The planned capital utilisation in 2025-6 reduced from £341 million to £153 million. Some of the money went into resource spending. Is it not a massive opportunity for us to invest in the sector? You have talked about the challenges, but only four out of the 29 companies that own ScotWind developers are headquartered in the United Kingdom. There are companies from other European countries, including Ireland, Sweden and Denmark, as well as regional Governments in Germany and Belgium, that own projects in ScotWind. Could we not take equity stakes and generate income?
You have started off by talking, quite rightly, about infrastructure, productivity and skills. If we made those projects deliver on fair work principles and support supply chain initiatives, would it not be a win-win all round? Is that something that you could advocate?
Last year, Future Economy Scotland carried out some work and basically said that it was a massive economic missed opportunity. We could just get on with taking those equity stakes and making profits, as well as building and using the supply chains and recruiting people.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
On the amount that came in from ScotWind, I will park the question of whether we could get more income from it, and focus on the question of why we are not spending the money that is coming in from it.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
I would like to see a detailed list from SNIB of the equity stakes that have been taken, because that is not in our briefing, and there is still that issue about not spending the money that has already come in—it is going elsewhere.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
You need to plan ahead; you cannot just do it.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
No—it is just a reflection. The Deputy First Minister mentioned some projects, and I have just mentioned the fact that we have not heard anything about the Berwick bank project and the potential for building the turbines in Scotland—in Leith.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
Several of us have suggested amendments in the group that are important as they seek to strengthen the legislation. My two amendments in the group, amendments 108 and 141, seek to strengthen the framework by embedding independent scrutiny and reinforcing the role of co-operatives in building fairer local economies.
Amendment 108 proposes to introduce a requirement for a regular independent review of community wealth building. I think that it is proportionate to pick up the points that the minister made earlier. An external assessment would be carried out every five years, both of the national community wealth building statement and of a representative sample of local action plans. It will be absolutely critical to learn from both. The review must publish its findings and recommendations. Ministers can then set out how they intend to respond or explain why they are not taking action. That would mean that we would review the effectiveness of the legislation every five years. During every parliamentary session, we would have a proper review, which would inform what ministers are doing, support local authorities and support different community wealth building companies. I think that those reviews will be very important.
I thank Paul Sweeney for his support of my amendment 141. It would require ministers to report regularly on the steps that they are taking to promote co-operatives and support co-operative development. It asks for clarity on what practical support and resources, including financial support, have been made available, and how effective those measures have been. It is not enough for us to say that co-operatives are a “nice to have”. We have quite a lot of them, but we should think about where there are opportunities for more and what lessons can be learned. As a member of the Co-operative Party, I have seen some fantastic local co-ops, but we need to think about how we can get more of them and how we can support people to set them up and make them work.
I am a member of the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative, in my constituency, and I have seen the benefits of the investment as well as the benefits for the local council. We should be ensuring that co-ops are a core part of the community wealth building approach, as they provide models of ownership and control that keep wealth rooted locally. My amendment 141 would ensure that their promotion is not just incidental, but that it is properly monitored, reported on and taken seriously as part of delivering the bill’s aims.
I am trying to ensure that the bill’s aspirations work in practice. There are many good amendments in this group. I note that the minister has offered to discuss them with us before stage 3. I hope that my amendments will achieve cross-party support, because I think that they are proportionate and that they will help in the implementation and review of the bill.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
There are two things to follow up on from that. First, you did not really address the issue about potentially taking equity stakes, which would involve using existing Scottish Government funding and having resources coming back in that you could reinvest, which would empower you to go further in terms of the decisions about your supply chains and where you get your manufacturing done.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
On the other thing that I wanted to finish with, you did not mention Berwick bank, and we have a huge opportunity—
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Sarah Boyack
My last point is about Berwick bank and the port of Leith. I will stop at this point, however, as that project is not happening yet.