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 469 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 23 November 2021
Maurice Golden
Mass gatherings for adults are allowed now. Will the First Minister let children have fun this Christmas and lift the ban on school nativity plays and Christmas shows?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 17 November 2021
Maurice Golden
I do not care about the UK; we are in Scotland. The minister has not answered my question.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 17 November 2021
Maurice Golden
I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement.
We have just seen the Green minister again break her promise to ban new incinerators. Unless she can somehow burn and recycle the same waste, how does she expect recycling to improve?
The minister has just suggested that the deposit return scheme might not launch as planned. If there is going to be a delay, I hope that ministers at least use the time wisely to improve the scheme. They can do that by ensuring a future-proof open standard system that is compatible with that in the rest of the UK. A digital app to allow home collections is essential to prevent disabled and vulnerable groups from effectively being excluded.
Finally, there is an issue of transparency. The deposit return scheme is shrouded in secrecy, with a multimillion-pound tender process that has been hidden from the public and the Parliament. Freedom of information requests will not work, because the Scottish National Party used a private company to oversee it. We do not need to see the commercial responses, but will the minister release the brief and the specification that have been provided to bidders?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Maurice Golden
On a point of order, Presiding Officer.
Last week, the Scottish Government agreed to provide a statement on incineration and the much-delayed deposit return scheme, but the topic for next week’s statement in the business motion is “Towards a Circular Economy”. I seek your guidance on how we can have full scrutiny of those incredibly important topics, and I would welcome an additional statement on the circular economy.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 2 November 2021
Maurice Golden
There has been very little on the scheme, despite the fact that the Government has been working on it for a decade.
My letter to the minister is still unanswered after a month. The Government is hiding from parliamentary scrutiny. It is time that the SNP and the Greens took their responsibilities seriously and allowed Parliament to question them on their shambolic record on tackling climate change.
17:07Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 2 November 2021
Maurice Golden
Presiding Officer, I seek your guidance on how Parliament will allow members to scrutinise the Scottish Government on whether it operates with the transparency that is expected of a Scottish Government.
Members will have noted the Government’s intention to provide a statement on incineration and deposit return, but not until after the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26. The Government has all the evidence now, so why the delay? We can only assume that it is because it is going to deliver bad news that could embarrass it in front of the world at COP26. Why are the two equally important environmental issues being bundled into one statement? That can only mean less scrutiny. It is to spare the blushes of the Scottish National Party and Green Party coalition.
In fact, incineration could have been dealt with two years ago. That is when Zero Waste Scotland forecast that the SNP was headed for more than 1 million tonnes of incineration overcapacity. That overcapacity could see the SNP-Green coalition not only importing waste to burn, but—which is perhaps more important—constraining future Scottish Governments to do the same. The Greens promised a ban on new incinerators in their manifesto, but now they announce a nonsensical review. That means that more incinerators can be built, which will make Scotland the ashtray of Europe.
There has been little on the deposit return scheme that has been promised for 1 July next year. [Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Maurice Golden
Let us look at the SNP’s track record. Air quality standards have not been met for 10 years in a row. Of 20 international biodiversity targets, more than half have been missed. The renewable heat target has been missed, along with the target for locally generated renewables. Recycling is going backwards, with a rate worse than that in 2016. Incineration capacity is skyrocketing, and the SNP and Greens could end up having to import waste to burn. In Glasgow, which is the COP26 host city, the SNP-run council has plunged the city into a growing crisis of rubbish and rats.
That is not all. The SNP failed to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016, broke its promise to deliver 28,000 green jobs and failed to meet its cycling target—at the current rate, it will take 290 years to meet it. The use of public transport and active travel by commuters is down. Of the plastic waste that is collected in Scotland, 2 per cent is recycled here, with 3 tonnes of waste leaving Scotland every minute. The SNP has failed to introduce a landfill ban on biodegradable waste. The deposit return scheme is a shambles, with businesses in the dark even though the SNP has been working on it for a decade. The SNP cancelled Zero Waste Scotland’s textiles programme.
I genuinely hope that Scotland can set an example for the rest of the world but, with the SNP and the Greens in government, I fear for it.
16:01Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Maurice Golden
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Maurice Golden
COP26 is being held against a backdrop of a worsening climate crisis. Over the past year, we have seen severe weather events tear across the planet: soaring temperatures in the United States, dust storms and cyclones in the far east, and flash floods across Europe, including here in the UK. Property has been damaged, businesses have been ruined and, worst of all, lives have been lost. There is, therefore, no doubting the warning from COP26 president Alok Sharma that
“the cost of inaction on climate change is most definitely greater than the cost of action.”—[Official Report, Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, 16 September; c 11.]
However, we can be proud that Britain is taking action. Among the world’s major economies, Britain was the first to establish legal targets to reach net zero by 2050 and is decarbonising fastest. In fact, Britain is now the second highest performing country in the Climate Change Performance Index. Britain is also committed to helping the rest of the world to take climate action, too, committing £11.6 billion a year by 2025 to help developing nations. That combination of action at home and a helping hand overseas gives Britain enormous climate credibility. We lead by example, which is vital if we are to convince others to take the action that is needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. COP26 gives Scotland a platform to aid that effort—what WWF Scotland describes as a
“historic opportunity to help create a ‘race to the top’ on climate action.”
I have always welcomed the Scottish Government’s setting of ambitious climate targets—ambition that can encourage others, especially other devolved Governments around the world, to set their own bar higher. Welcome as that ambition is, there is simply no getting around the fact that emissions targets have been missed for three years in a row. Where the Conservative UK Government is building credibility, the SNP-Green coalition is running out of it.
Presiding Officer,
“to be credible, the Scottish Government must, at a minimum, deliver Scotland’s emissions targets … we can afford no more excuses.”
Those are not my words but a damning assessment from Oxfam. That is the SNP’s problem on the environment. It is quick to tell everyone what it wants to do and just not very good at doing it.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Maurice Golden
Will the member take an intervention?