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 874 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
You did not discuss that possibility at any board or management meetings before February this year.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
I totally accept that it might not have been planned, that you wanted the plant to grow and that that is why you made the investment, but I just find it slightly hard to believe that February was the first point at which you did even a speculative examination. In a business—especially a business the size of yours—you scenario plan and look at the optimistic, expected and pessimistic scenarios, so I am just wondering at what point in the past few years was the first time that the option of plant consolidation appeared, even if it was a distant pessimistic scenario. You never—
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
I am interested in understanding the scope of your representation on site. What is the breakdown of the areas that the two unions represent?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
Derek, you raised points about China and considerations under the Subsidy Control Act 2022. My understanding is that you can take into consideration social value and you can also, as you say, provide direct awards. You can also treat bids from non-treaty countries differently from bids from treaty countries, which China is not. I think that we all know the importance of encouraging people on to public transport and that transport should be seen as being absolutely critical to the economy. Could or should more conditionality have been placed on the grants provided by Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government? Do you share my understanding of what the 2022 act might allow us to do going forward?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
The second suggestion is the one that you alluded to. What we need, in part, is a change in the procurement approach. Is there a possibility that, rather than only changing the narration of what is going on in procurement—which is what the report would do—there could be a change in the structure of the procurement that is undertaken by local authorities and other public bodies? The structure could require them to do some initial work to explain their procurement requirements, either for particular procurement exercises or more generally, and it could require them, in their work on how bids are assessed, to think in particular about social value, as that is a permitted reason for granting and awarding contracts, over and above simple financial value.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
So, it is the same workforce.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
Mr Thomson has made some good points that we can take up as a committee. I make the simple observation that we have just had the provisional outturn, in which the Scottish Government had a £500 million underspend. I make that observation in relation to where money could be found.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
It was really about the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and whether more conditionality should have been applied, on the basis of that act, to the moneys that came directly from the Scottish Government and to the grants from Scottish Enterprise.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
I am known for nothing else but plain speaking. You should not smile so broadly, minister.
The subtext to this is that there is a risk that, in essence, nothing will really change as a result of the bill—the Government will issue another set of guidance, there will be a round of consultations by local authorities and they will produce a report. There have been four suggestions—that is the number that comes to mind—for changes that could be made at stage 2, and I ask you to consider them.
First, in relation to what Lorna Slater and Gordon MacDonald said, could a consistent set of metrics be provided—not necessarily in the bill but in a subsection of the guidance—and could local authorities be required to set their own targets? You made the good point that one set of targets cannot apply to every area. However, if each local authority used a consistent set of metrics but was required to set its own targets, would that improve the bill and move things forward? What is your response to that idea?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Daniel Johnson
This will not work unless there is capacity and capability to heed the calls. It is about ensuring that people who know how to do that stuff have the confidence to do it. That is not going to happen unless there is support. Is there a possibility of considering broad duties to support capacity building or the Government looking at how it could use its agencies to help local communities to develop the skills, know-how and wherewithal to approach community wealth building? Unless people are starting businesses and creating community organisations and initiatives, community wealth building will just not happen. No amount of consultation or reports in the world will change that.
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