Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
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.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
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.
Search by MSP
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.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
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.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
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:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
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.
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Displaying 6874 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
The final question comes from Monica—over to you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
People out there are facing a cost of living crisis, the prices of food and suchlike are rising exponentially and we are asking people to make fundamental changes to their lives, such as moving from using fossil fuels and oil boilers to air-source heat pumps and so on. There is a cost to all that, in the same way as there is if we follow the recommendation that we eat less meat, because that means that we can reduce the size of the herd, which means that the price of meat increases. To make people buy into that, which is what you and the Governments are encouraging people to do, surely they will have to know what they have to invest financially. Just saying that it is better for the world is too abstract if they do not know how many pounds they are going to have to take out of their pockets to pay for it.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
What does the percentage figure for GDP between two periods actually mean for a person in a house in Scotland? How much will it cost them to achieve the targets that you suggest that the Government should achieve?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
Basically, the approach is all about horse trading among the various areas where carbon is emitted, to come up with an overall carbon budget. Does it give anyone in Scotland an idea of what the costs will be to the average household or the average individual, or does it just set out a figure for carbon with no costs set out for individuals and what they are going to have to buy into?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
So, you are confident that your interaction with the Scottish Government has not caused any delay in the production of the draft carbon budgets.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
James, I sort of heard that answer. I am struggling with your sound today.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
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
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
I am still slightly concerned. I am not sure that I will get the exact date right, but it was something like 22 May when you gave your advice—or perhaps that was when we were expecting the budgets. There was then a delay of about three weeks in getting the Scottish Government’s response to your advice and the draft budgets. That suggests that there had not been much liaison before you produced your advice to the Scottish Government, because it was thrown into disarray by it. Is that an unfair characterisation of what happened?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
Moving on slightly, I think, James, that you will understand the process that has been gone through: emergency legislation was passed last year to change the original legislation and bring in carbon budgets. We were expecting carbon budgets in May and, based on your advice, there was a delay. There was some talk within the Scottish Government and, having received your advice, it decided to reject some of it.
I would say that, for the committee, the whole process has been fairly torturously slow, and as convener, I am absolutely concerned that we will be dealing with the final part of the climate change plan in the rump of the parliamentary session, probably in the last month and the last weeks before the Parliament goes into recess in the run-up to the election. I am concerned about that, and I have to wonder whether a climate change plan will be approved by the Parliament and put in place.
Can you explain to me what interactions you have had with the Scottish Government and whether those interactions have justifiably led to the delays that the committee has faced in considering the carbon budget and, eventually, the climate change plan, when we get it?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Edward Mountain
The subject is interesting. At the moment, I do not think that I understand enough about carbon budgets and the proposals that the Scottish Government has made to give me confidence about what I am being asked to invest in, which is what we are asking every single person in Scotland to invest in to reach net zero, or about what the basic costs are to those individuals.
I heard what you said about reducing the price of electricity; well, we have not seen a reduction in its price, which seems to be going up continually. As far as cars are concerned, I look forward to having a car that can get me home without my needing to stop to charge it, which delays me in the process of getting there.
To turn to some of the generalities, there is a complex mix of what is devolved and what is not devolved with climate policy responsibilities, is there not? Which devolved responsibilities are the really important ones that the Scottish Government should focus on first in the climate change plan? What does the Scottish Government have responsibility for now and what should be its focus of attention? I do not know who wants to answer that.
