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 1342 contributions
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
Basically, we, the stakeholders and you will have to lobby the Treasury quite hard to ensure that this fund that it still holds the purse strings for is enhanced to make level boarding a reality across Scotland. Would it be fair to say that?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
You said that the UK budget for such work has been restricted. Has that budget gone up or down in the current control period?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
They are a subsidy for the passenger, but also a subsidy for the company.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
Yes.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
I think that it is significant, and I have often seen a hospitality steward on the train, when there is one, helping as well. As I said, hats off to your staff, but there is room for improvement. Folks who are not used to travelling can become a little bit anxious if they are not boarded quickly or it is quite near the time for departure.
I want to move on to the infrastructure aspect, which Joanne has mentioned, although my questions are probably for Liam. Quite a number of folks have called for level boarding. As Joanne said, we have Victorian infrastructure, and, on the journeys that I take, I hear the announcement at Dundee, for example, to watch out because there is a large step to the platform. We also have the likes of Dunkeld and Birnam station—not on a route that I normally take—which I understand is due to have its platforms upgraded. What can be done swiftly to resolve some of these problems? Has Network Rail done any analysis or any stocktake of how much it would cost to bring our stations up to modern standards for level boarding?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
We have already touched on disability access in Mark Ruskell’s questioning. Hats off to your staff—they do a good service, particularly conductors, when folk do not appear at platforms. How do you ensure that there is availability of and provision for passenger assistance when it is required? How can you do a little bit better in ensuring that those folk are timeous? I have seen—and I am sure that others have seen—a disabled passenger getting a little bit anxious because they are not being boarded quickly enough, as they see it.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
I will ask Liam Sumpter some specific questions about that soon.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
Would it be fair to say that, on those longer distance routes where EV maybe is not an option, hydrogen would be an option but that there would have to be continuity of supply?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
Before we move on to that, I want to see what we actually know at this moment and get an estimate of what the current financial cost would be of dealing with the two thirds of stations that are not fully accessible. Do you have a register? Do you have an estimate of how much it would cost, at today’s prices, to make all those stations accessible?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Kevin Stewart
Let me play devil’s advocate a little bit here. Surely supporting service provision by means other than Government moneys would be a good thing. There has been quite a lot of talk today and at our meeting last week about the advantages of bus priority measures in increasing patronage. If the Government was to invest more in those schemes, for example, which is likely to increase your profitability, would your company—I will ask the others about this as well—use some of that increased profit to increase service provision?