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 1083 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
That brings us to the end of the evidence session. I thank both witnesses for coming along at fairly short notice. I appreciate how important this issue is to your members, to the community and to all the workforce that is affected. As we heard earlier, we will take evidence from Alexander Dennis in an extra meeting tomorrow.
11:41 Meeting continued in private until 12:34.Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
Our next item of business is the first of two evidence sessions on Alexander Dennis. I begin by declaring an interest as I am a member of Unite the Union and the GMB. Today, we will hear from the trade unions and tomorrow, we will hear from Alexander Dennis management.
On 11 June, Alexander Dennis announced a consultation on consolidating its United Kingdom bus body manufacturing operations in a single site in Scarborough. That would mean that the site at Falkirk would close and work at Larbert would be suspended upon the completion of current contracts. Given the pressing timescales, the committee agreed to hold the evidence sessions this week.
I am pleased to welcome Robert Deavy, senior organiser for manufacturing, GMB Scotland, and Derek Thomson, Unite Scotland’s regional secretary. As always, I ask that members and witnesses keep questions and answers as concise as possible. I am grateful to the panel for joining us at short notice.
Clearly, this is one of the most significant industrial threats that we have faced in Scotland for many years, with 400 skilled direct jobs at risk at a company that should be playing a major part in Scotland’s net zero ambitions. We are keen to understand from the trade unions not only how we got here but what must happen urgently to try to save those jobs and prevent the closure from becoming a done deal.
My first question is what impact there would be for the affected communities if the proposed closure went ahead?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
We will come back to the detail of what the business needs to do. Can you set out clearly for the committee what the political ask is? What do the Scottish and UK Governments need to do to protect the jobs?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
I was thinking more about formalising that role as a co-designer in the bill, as opposed to those bodies inputting into the plan. That point came through in some of the evidence.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
Good morning, and welcome to the 21st meeting in 2025 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Our first item of business is a decision on whether to take in private item 5, which is consideration of evidence. Are members content to take that item in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
Our second item of business is our final stage 1 evidence session on the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill. I am pleased to welcome Ivan McKee, Minister for Public Finance. Accompanying him from the Scottish Government are: Stephen White, head of community wealth building; Laura Moffat, community wealth building policy and legislation manager; and Caterina Capaldi, solicitor, all from the Scottish Government. As always, members and witnesses should keep questions and answers as concise as possible.
I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
Do we need a law to do that? Can you not just have an agreement with COSLA to set that direction for public bodies? Public bodies, such as Scottish Enterprise, rely on ministerial direction letters, so could that not all have been covered by that process?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
If we are to have a bill, why does it ignore the big-ticket policy areas that really matter, which we have heard about in evidence? Why are changes in the policy areas of, for example, procurement thresholds, small and medium-sized enterprise access to procurement, and improved community asset transfer policies not in the bill? Have you not missed an opportunity to tackle those issues and really move the dial on community wealth building?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
You raised a point about contracts, and we will question the company tomorrow. What assurances have you been given by the company that, if the contracts are secured, the work will be carried out in Falkirk and not simply transferred elsewhere? Has the company given you the assurance that, if it is able to get the contracts, it will be able to retain jobs in Falkirk?
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Colin Smyth
Gordon MacDonald has a couple of supplementaries.