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 1481 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
I am sorry, but I am just about to finish—I have only 20 seconds left.
The fact that it is on a reserved list means that those companies have no way of getting recompense for the money that they are spending, because there is no guarantee that Acorn will come on stream. That is what is shameful.
16:30Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. It feels a bit like déjà vu, because I spoke about the issue in last week’s debate on the just transition. I will probably use some of my words from last week, Presiding Officer, so please forgive me.
It is no surprise that the north-east has relied on the oil and gas industry for many years to provide vital jobs and investment in the region. As a result, it has flourished. My family has been brought up with money that was earned through the oil and gas industry. My other half has worked in the industry for most of his life and my daughter is now an operational technology engineer who spends an awful lot of time on oil rigs doing her work—dinna ask me exactly what she does, because she is a lot brainier than I ever will be.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
My understanding is that it is Shell that has put the kibosh on Cambo.
It is a pity that we cannot agree that what we are trying to do here is protect jobs in the north-east—that is what I am doing—instead of making speeches that, shamefully, try to scare the folk of the north-east into believing that we are shutting down the oil rigs tomorrow. That is an absolute disgrace and I am getting sick and tired of hearing it every day.
Yesterday, at the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, we heard from Professor Haszeldine, who was absolutely brilliant. He talked about why Acorn was not selected. Some of what he said was spot on, and it might come as a surprise to some members. I will read a paragraph from his submission:
“Acorn has long been recognised as being the best-investigated and most mature of all the UK decarbonisation clusters. It is also low risk, because the pipelines exist, the storage site is very well investigated, and minimal new infrastructure is needed. Acorn also opens up access to 80% of the geological storage around the UK, of many diverse geological types, providing the highest chance of developing secure storage geol”—
geology; sorry, my teeth need putting back in—
“and Acorn can rapidly develop supplies of CO2 by shipping from sources around the UK”.
Those factors were not taken into account when people were looking at the contracts.
The Acorn development is huge for us in terms of moving forward with a just transition. However, the UK Government has put it in reserve. I am no expert on this, but I was told yesterday that that means that the companies that are developing technologies and investigating new ways of doing things in relation to it have no way of getting recompense—
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
Does Mike Tholen wish to comment?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
I thank the gentlemen for coming to the committee. The decision to put the Scottish Cluster on the reserve list has already been touched on, but what will the impact of that decision be on our emissions reduction targets?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
Mr Dalhuijsen, what do you think the impact will be?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
How difficult is it to do that, given that you do not know whether the Scottish Cluster will go ahead?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
I am sorry if I put you on the spot there. I wonder whether Alan James wants to comment.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Jackie Dunbar
Yes, thank you. It was very helpful.