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 2716 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Graham Simpson
ScotRail has made what I would describe as a fair and affordable offer to RMT staff. Is it not time for the union barons of the RMT to put that offer to their members and to stop holding the country to ransom?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Graham Simpson
I congratulate Miles Briggs on having secured the debate. I wanted to speak because most of us will have been affected by cancer in some way—either through ourselves, our families or other people who are close to us being diagnosed. I am no exception, but I will not regale members with a personal story today. We all know about cancer and the effects that it can have.
I had a look at the Cancer Card website. It was not clear to me that there is a card involved; however, there is one, and Miles Briggs handed it to me earlier. I think that the idea is that when a person anywhere in Scotland is diagnosed with cancer, they will be given a card. There is a barcode on the back, which can be scanned and takes the user to a website. I have tried it and it works. When someone gets to the website, as we have heard, it is a one-stop shop of services across Scotland. It is a fantastic resource that can be built on, because when someone is diagnosed with cancer, there is a feeling of despair and “What do I do now?” People really need to know where to turn.
The website is very good, because it is localised and there are services throughout Scotland. In my own patch, which is Lanarkshire, places such as Kilbryde Hospice, Lanarkshire Cancer Care Trust, Lanarkshire Carers, Lanarkshire’s Speak Easy cancer support group—which is for people who have throat cancer—Maggie’s Lanarkshire, Leukaemia Care, move more North Lanarkshire, and Strathcarron Hospice are listed. Of course, there will be more groups out there.
The website is really good, and I congratulate Jen Hardy on getting it set up. We can build on it, and it needs to be promoted. What we actually need—I do not know whether this is in place yet—is everyone who has a cancer diagnosis, as I described at the start of my speech, being given a card so that they are signposted to local and national services. I think that that will be a great comfort and help to people.
Once again, I congratulate Miles Briggs and I congratulate Jen Hardy on getting the service going.
13:12Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Graham Simpson
We have been here before. Nearly a year ago we held an almost identical debate, calling on the Scottish Government to reaffirm its commitment to dualling the A9 and the A96, and to commit to upgrading other roads. We lost. The Scottish National Party amended our motion to take out any reference to particular roads.
Today, the SNP amendment mentions both roads, but nowhere in it is a commitment to fully dual them. Instead, we have the language of short-term fixes and a review. It looks very much as though those historic commitments lie in the gutter.
The SNP was once behind these projects. It committed to fully dualling the A9 between Perth and Inverness by 2025. Since that pledge was made 11 years ago, just over 12 miles have been completed—a little over a mile a year. At that rate, it will be 2086 by the time the other 70 miles are complete. I am afraid to say that none of us will be around to see it. Nicola Sturgeon can cancel the photo call—there will be no selfies on the A9 for her, and nor should there be, because there is a very sorry tale to tell.
Since our debate last year, a number of lives have been lost. So far this year, there have been 12 deaths on the A9 between Perth and Inverness—the highest number for 12 years, and all on single-carriageway sections. The latest incident—last month—saw 64-year-old George Norris killed when his Ford C-Max was in a collision with two other vehicles near Kingussie. Also in October, a man and a woman died when their car collided with a lorry near Birnam, south of Dunkeld. There were two fatal crashes on the A9 in September, one near Slochd and another near?Dunkeld, along with a fatality near Carrbridge on 30 September. That followed three members of one American family dying after a collision with a lorry on the A9 near Newtonmore on 10 August. Further, in July, 68-year-old David McPherson died in a crash at Slochd summit near Carrbridge, with his 65-year-old wife, Elza, and their two-year-old grandson dying in hospital a short time later.
Some 333 people have been killed on the A9 between Perth and Inverness since 1979. That is why we need desperately to fully dual that road. Accidents will continue to happen—there are different reasons for all accidents—but there will be far fewer of them. We can literally save lives by investing in these roads.
What about the A96? Thankfully, the death toll on the A96 this year has not been as bad as it has been on the A9. There was one fatality, though, in January, when 78-year-old John Channon of Dyce died following a crash near Auldearn.
The campaign to dual the A96 has been going on for 30 years. As far back as 1989, The Press and Journal was running a campaign called “end the carnage, spend the cash”. At that point, it was the UK Government that was responsible. It did not end the carnage and it did not spend the cash, and nothing has really changed since devolution.
In 2011, the SNP committed to completing the dualling of the road between Inverness and Aberdeen by 2030. Of course, that was before it did its deal with the Greens, which put a halt to things while we wait for a “transparent, evidence-based review” of the environmental impacts of the project. Last year, Transport Scotland was claiming that the study would be completed by the end of this year, and the minister’s amendment today makes the same claim.
I can only hope that Transport Scotland has not been listening too much to the words of Green MSP Maggie Chapman, who predicted last year that the review would find that it
“isn’t viable to dual the whole way”.
The problem that we have here is that the SNP has been ensnared by the Greens. It is almost as though Jenny Gilruth has to ask permission from Maggie Chapman to do anything. We can imagine the conversation: “Please, Maggie, can I dual the roads?”; “No, minister—don’t you remember? It’s not viable.” We really are in a bad place if we are to base our roads improvement programme on the views of Maggie Chapman.
Of course, investing in those roads is not just about road safety. Making transport easier boosts the local and—because of the roads’ strategic importance—national economy. Members would not expect the anti-growth Greens to understand that, but I would have thought that wiser heads in the SNP might do so.
It would be remiss of me not to mention other roads in Scotland that are in dire need of improvement, such as the A75 and A77. Between 2018 and last year, on those two roads, there were nine fatal accidents—a shocking toll of death. Today, I met members of the A77 action group—
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Graham Simpson
It is obvious that the minister did not hear my intervention on the transport minister, where I welcomed some of the short-term measures that she will carry out. The transport minister says that she is fully committed to dualling the A9 and A96. Is he?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Graham Simpson
I am happy to take the intervention.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Graham Simpson
I thoroughly agree with Mr Carson, who is a champion of these roads. I do not want to be here, moving this motion, because it should not be necessary.
With regret, I move,
That the Parliament notes with alarm the number of recent fatalities on the A9 and A96; recognises the pain that these tragedies have caused families; believes that fully dualling both roads could lead to a significant improvement in road safety as well as helping the economy; notes the SNP administration’s previous commitment to fully dual the A9 between Perth and Inverness and the A96, and calls on the Scottish Government to set out when these vital works will be completed.
16:41Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Graham Simpson
Of course, short-term measures can have an effect, but would the minister accept that fully dualling both of those roads could lead to a significant improvement in road safety?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Graham Simpson
Will the minister take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Graham Simpson
To ask the Scottish Government how much it will cost to fit sensors for the liquefied natural gas system on ferry 801 as reported to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. (S6T-00926)
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Graham Simpson
My question was, how much will it cost? I am afraid that the Deputy First Minister has not answered that question. Perhaps he can try again.
I will put this to him, because we need to get to the bottom of what has happened. Is it the case that the need for sensors has been known about for some time and someone simply forgot to place the order? If that is correct, has anyone fallen on their sword, or been got rid of, over that? If not, why not?
In addition, I still want to know the cost.