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 1377 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 23 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
On that sense of collective challenge and purpose in the political discourse, Chris Stark made some powerful points on the BBC at the weekend. As this is your last time at the committee in your current role, I give you the chance to say anything further on the collective challenge in our discourse and how we need to work collaboratively—not just to all of us around the table but to every politician in this building, every researcher and press officer behind the scenes, every journalist, and every campaigner and researcher for the many stakeholders who are involved in those considerations. How do we get our collective discourse and position to a better place?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 23 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
Recently, I visited a very interesting project that Lar Housing Trust has undertaken, in which it has converted an existing tenement building and a new tenement building with a district heating system through two British companies—one of which is Scottish. Kensa is a UK level company and Sunamp is from here in Scotland. There is evidence of what can be done.
As a constituency MSP who represents a lot of people who live in tenement housing and as someone who lives in one myself, reform of the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 is important, as is the current consultation. Those issues need to be seen in tandem if we want to convert existing housing stock.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 23 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
We will need to reform the 2004 act to enable or to compel shared owners to come together, and to potentially have building bonds that achieve financial—
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 23 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
Professor Bell, you talked earlier about agriculture and land use. Do you want to say anything more on that? Your assessment suggests that the contribution of several key actions in agriculture, forestry and peatlands is off track. What would Scotland need—and what would you need—from the next climate change plan to provide certainty that there will be delivery in those areas?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 23 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
Thank you.
I will first go back to the topic of having a five-yearly carbon budget approach, rather than annual targets. I appreciate that you have clarified that you will make proposals, having considered the Welsh situation. Do you want to add anything more at this stage about the challenges, practicalities and process for setting five-yearly carbon budgets and how you envisage that working through the Government and Parliament?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 23 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
Considering the politics, the fact that the Scottish Parliament has five-yearly parliamentary terms might be quite helpful in that regard.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 17 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
Going back to schooling and the considerations around reform, I noted the part of the video that was about life skills and financial awareness. Will you seek to push those issues in the context of education reform and curriculum changes?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 17 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
I presume that, in addition to higher and further education, you will take into account considerations to do with employers and the apprenticeship programmes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 17 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
The Government already has a lot to consider from the various reviews that have taken place in recent months and years. Do you feel that the doors are open, so to speak, for you to feed in your thoughts, as you have just mentioned?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 17 April 2024
Ben Macpherson
The issue is that young people are contracted in law and they do not have the agency to move between clubs in a way that would be right and reasonable. That is what your concerns derive from, is it not?