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 806 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Good morning, Robert and Derek, and thank you for coming in.
I have a number of questions, some of which are about trying to get some information ahead of our meeting with ADL tomorrow. You have suggested that, on average, there is a difference of around £100,000 across all bus models. Is that figure widening?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Scottish Government schemes—and probably schemes further afield—such as the Scottish ultra-low emission bus scheme and the Scottish zero emission bus challenge fund are all open to foreign buses; they are not excluded.
You mentioned the cost of furlough. What estimates do you have for that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Over the three sites?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Around 900 for the year. You are not sure of the overall capacity across all three sites, but you know that Scarborough could produce—
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Where contracts are being won—you mentioned Blackpool, where, I think that there have been a number of new buses, recently, and a hundred, overall, over the period—why are buyers choosing Alexander Dennis, at additional cost, and not going for the cheaper Chinese options?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Okay. Thanks.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
We talk a lot about councils getting involved, but one area of interest is where the Government can be involved. A lot of the time, Government contracts are delivered centrally—for example, for insulation programmes. Will there be a move, or is there an opportunity, for the Government to decentralise some of those contracts? They are often given to large companies in the central belt and are then delivered in rural areas by secondary contractors. Is there an opportunity to have more flexibility in how those contracts are delivered in order to allow more local engagement and delivery?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Essentially, ADL is limiting itself to 400 buses a year fewer than it had hoped to do over three sites.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Do you have any estimate on the cost for upgrading the sites in Scotland?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Halcro Johnston
If they are choosing to buy from Alexander Dennis and pay an additional £100,000 per bus, that is £10 million for those 100 buses. I know that we are using rough figures. There must be a reason why they are choosing to do that. Is it because they want to buy from a UK company or is it to do with quality? Those reasons are important when considering how to make the business sustainable so that there is choice in the future.