Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
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.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
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.
Search by MSP
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.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
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.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
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:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
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.
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Displaying 7190 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Railways Bill
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
It may not be the cabinet secretary, because she might not be here in the next parliamentary session. I do not think that you are standing, cabinet secretary—are you? It will be your successor, whoever that may be.
Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. We will later consider in private the evidence that we have heard, which will inform the report that we put to the Parliament.
I will briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
We cannot hear you yet. Hold on. Let us just wait until I get the nod.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
You must have got a report pretty quickly from the dry dock. If it was my boat, I probably would have gone down and looked at it myself. That still left four months to work out that there would be an increase in price before the committee was notified.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
Excuse me, but I will start off by saying that that is the fourth time I have heard that speech. I heard it when I went to Clyde Blowers, I heard it when I listened to Tim Hair and I heard it from Graeme Thomson’s predecessor. Those speeches were almost exactly the same.
In the previous parliamentary session, the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee charged Ferguson Marine with updating it on the build of the Glen Rosa and Glen Sannox. That issue has been passed on to this committee, which is the logical successor committee. I have to say that the reports that have been delivered to this committee have, over a period of time, become progressively weaker, thinner and more off timescale. In fact, that resulted in this committee sending a letter on 2 April 2025 to Ferguson Marine—David Dishon dealt with that letter. We got a holding response telling us that Graeme Thomson would be in post and that we could not get a full report until then because it would be unfair on him. There seems to have been some speculation in the press about who authorised and suggested that response.
We then got a response on 13 May last year. That letter was written by you, Graeme Thomson, once you had had a chance to get your feet under the desk and to work out what the situation was. I would suggest that the report in your letter was fairly upbeat. You said that the work would be on time, and, in the third last paragraph, that costs would increase to £172.5 million, with a £12.5 million contingency. We were then told this January that costs would increase to £197.5 million and that delivery would not be on time.
Graeme, what am I to believe? Everything changes. It seems like quicksand. Having looked at the vessels for 10 years, I have to say that my frustration is huge. Will you explain why your letter of 13 May was so fundamentally wrong on price and on the delivery date?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
Wow. To me, it seems to be a bit of a guddle, especially given the fact that, based on some of what you have said regarding LNG, you must have known that LNG could not be stored at either place when you started down this road, yet you factored that in.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
So it will be the taxpayers of Scotland.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
Is the extra £500,000, or whatever it is, for the Glen Rosa included in the £197.5 million?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Railways Bill
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
Our second item of business is consideration of a legislative consent memorandum and a supplementary legislative consent memorandum on the Railways Bill. The bill was introduced in the United Kingdom Parliament on 5 November 2025, and its main purpose is to establish Great British railways as a new publicly owned body with responsibility for rail infrastructure and passenger services across Great Britain. It also makes wider provision in relation to railway funding, access to infrastructure and passenger representation.
The Scottish Government lodged an initial legislative consent memorandum on 5 November 2025, followed by a supplementary memorandum on 20 February this year, reflecting amendments made to the bill during its passage through the House of Commons. I note that the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has considered the memorandums and, although it has drawn attention to limited information on one new delegated power, it has made no recommendations in relation to consent. The committee issued a targeted call for views, and I place on record the committee’s thanks to those who were able to respond within the very tight timeframes with contributions to our scrutiny.
This morning, we will hear from the Cabinet Secretary for Transport before considering what recommendations to make to Parliament on the Scottish Government’s draft legislative consent motion. I therefore welcome to the meeting Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport; Bill Reeve, director for rail reform, Transport Scotland; and Debbie Blair, lawyer, Scottish Government.
Before we move to questions, I think that the cabinet secretary wants to make a short opening statement—I keep asking for short statements, but no one listens. Over to you, cabinet secretary.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
You went into the dry dock in August.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
MV Glen Sannox (Hull 801) and MV Glen Rosa (Hull 802)
Meeting date: 10 March 2026
Edward Mountain
Something in that 15 September update to the committee was fundamentally flawed—it was wrong. Either the price was going to remain the same and the boat was going to be delivered on time, or the price was not going to remain the same and the boat was not going to be delivered on time. You said something to the committee that was fundamentally wrong.
