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 6073 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
I am sure that that gives absolute confidence to people in rural areas who rely on private transport to get them to places because there is no public transport. I must also say that people in rural areas often have to travel to cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow for treatment, because there is no treatment in rural areas. They will be penalised for doing that if there are congestion charges. I think that a lot of work needs to be done in order to explain what the effects of the proposals would mean for individual households.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
Thank you, Kevin, and thank you for not missing a beat when I came to you when I should have gone to Douglas Lumsden first. Apologies to you and to Douglas. I will come to you in a minute, Douglas, but Monica Lennon has a follow-up question, and I also have one.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
I am tempted to ask Eoin Devane how many more battery storage sites that would mean are dotted around Scotland—as well as the size of each of them—but that is maybe too difficult to work out.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
That would be helpful. People also know that installation costs come up front when their boiler breaks down, and they have to meet them all at once; as a result, they have to carry the interest. Politicians are asking people to sign up to policies, and individuals want to know the price of them. I would love to be in a position to say that I will be better off in 2050, but I suspect that I will not be around to benefit.
With that, we will now have a question from Mark Ruskell and then go to Monica Lennon.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
No. I was simply going to suggest that, before you go on to your next line of questioning, which I think is on agriculture, it might be appropriate to take a wee break. We have been going for an hour and 45 minutes, so I suggest that we take a 10-minute comfort break until 10.55 to allow everyone to stretch their legs before we continue.
I suspend the meeting for 10 minutes.
10:44 Meeting suspended.Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
Welcome back. Bob Doris, I apologise for cutting you off as you were about to launch into the next bit. Over to you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
Before we move on from the issue of heat pumps, I have a question. I am thinking about a two-bedroom, two-public room house with a kitchen and a bathroom, which was built before 1950. As a surveyor, I would estimate that, by the time you have put in the heat pump, insulated the house and replaced all the equipment in it, it would cost between £30,000 and £40,000. Those are the sort of figures that I have been given by the industry. If electricity prices were to reduce the price of heating the house by £500 a year, it would take 70 years for somebody to pay back that cost.
How will you encourage somebody to buy in to replacing an oil system that is running at the moment and to spending, say, £30,000 to £35,000 on a heat pump system for their house if they do not have that money in the first place and it will take them 70 years to pay it back? I am just trying to get a price for individuals so that they understand what this will cost them. It will then be up to them to make a decision. Are the figures that I have quoted unreasonable?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
I have a couple of questions. One of my concerns is that, in Scotland, herd reduction has been going on apace for many years. Numbers have been decreasing naturally, as Mark Ruskell suggested. The problem is that reducing livestock numbers will undoubtedly affect small-scale producers, who will feel that it is no longer possible for them to continue farming if the returns from their animals are reduced because they are asked to keep fewer of them. In my opinion, it will disadvantage small-scale producers.
I support the Government making some moves to reduce the calving interval, but farmers as a whole have increased maternal traits of their cows, which means that less is driven by bags. There is also earlier finishing. Most farmers can produce an animal for the table in 11 months, but they are not allowed to sell it as Scotch beef until it is 12 months old. They are forced to keep it for another month until it becomes Scotch beef, in effect, which seems bizarre to me.
Farmers have also driven with less intervention and they have followed the old principles of Turnip Townshend. Eoin, I am sure that you have looked back at those. They are about crop rotation and making sure that mixed farming is going on. That is what we should be driving towards, rather than, say, putting trees in pastures, which to my mind comes with problems regarding flies. That causes problems with all the cows and livestock that are there.
Do you not think that having a more integrated and clever farming system, with mixed farming at the core of farming in Scotland, would be a better approach than just having a blanket reduction in livestock numbers?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
While you are there, Dr Devane, could you just answer a simple question for me? As a more balanced pathway to net zero, the Climate Change Committee suggested a 6 per cent shift from car use to public transport use. What does that mean per car user in the UK? How many kilometres will they have to shift? Six per cent does not mean very much to me, and I doubt that it means very much to the car user.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
I will bring in Mark Ruskell before I delve into that too deeply.