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Every contribution to the Official Report — chamber and committee — searchable in one place. Pulled from data.parliament.scot, indexed for full-text search, linked through to every MSP.

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Showing 60 of 2,096,497 contributions. Latest 30 days: 3,898. Coverage: 12 May 1999 — 16 Jun 2026.
Christopher Harvie SNP Chamber
17 Mar 2011
Bus Services Regulation
I am just about to do so. In fact, I only wish that the mass of Scottish commuters would use the bus. I have statistics from the energy efficiency action plan on the travel patterns of Stirling Council members and officials, which show that 82 per cent travelled by car; 11 per...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
17 Mar 2011
Bus Services Regulation
I declare that I am president of the Scottish Association for Public Transport, which has provided a memo for members setting out a useful range of pragmatic options for improvement.I am also, as we say in Germany, auf dem Abstellgleis. I am a retiring MSP on a one-way bus pas...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
10 Mar 2011
Fenwick Weavers Society
Congratulations to Willie Coffey on securing this members’ business debate and speaking so eloquently about the success of that pioneer, the Fenwick Weavers Society.In what will be my last speech to the Parliament, I wish to offer some strategic ideas for today’s co-operative ...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
09 Mar 2011
“Teaching Scotland’s Future”
Since the European Commission found that 11 per cent of European small to medium-sized enterprises lose contracts because of the lack of language skills, at a cost of millions of euros and jobs, can we be assured that modern languages and cultural and regional studies will hav...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Subordinate Legislation
Anything that involves a large amount of civil engineering reminds me instantly of the Office of Fair Trading inquiry at, I think, the end of 2006 into the granting of civil engineering contracts. The OFT found that there was massive capitalisation in that area but then decide...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Subordinate Legislation
They came from an inquiry by the German carbon trust into the output from German power stations. Research to update the figures in my own work up to the mid-1990s into the extraction of oil provided the figure of 1.5 billion tonnes. I would be thrilled to think that there woul...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Subordinate Legislation
While we have you here, can you provide us with an estimate of the capacity for carbon capture and storage that exists in the northern North Sea? I have seen it put at a maximum of about 1.5 billion tonnes equivalent.Given that Europe’s production of CO2 from, say, the power s...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Legacy Paper
I will be releasing the next edition of “No Gods and Precious Few Heroes”, which I am working on just now.
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Legacy Paper
Another odd area that falls into a fissure between transport and industry is communications. It has already been mentioned that we are badly off on ScotRail for wi-fi. On certain services on the continent, wi-fi is almost universal. A huge Scottish population commutes by car—t...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Legacy Paper
Fraud, I think, is the point.The implication of much of our banking inquiry was about the future for mutualisation. The distrust of the existing banking arrangements that was expressed was certainly not assuaged by our dialogues with the two state banks, as they in effect are....
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Legacy Paper
And whether the superfast broadband that is offered turns out to be what it was advertised as.
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Legacy Paper
That is particularly necessary given the consequences of the Scotland Bill. The mix that goes into the budget will be much more complex from a taxation point of view.
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Legacy Paper
I still recollect the polite chit-chat with the British ambassador in Iceland, in which the prospective progress of the Icelandic economy figured not one bit.
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Legacy Paper
In other words, “The operation was successful,” rather than, “The patient died.”
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
Legacy Paper
I wonder whether, given what happened in the past four years—that is, the economy falling over a cliff, particularly the Scottish economy—it might be worth mentioning that at the beginning. In 2007, we set out believing that there would be a calm sea and a prosperous voyage bu...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
International Trade (Scottish Development International)
I have met some of the interns—they are very good.
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
International Trade (Scottish Development International)
I still see some of my students when I go back and do compacts in Tübingen. One or two of them have said to me, “We like coming to your lectures because they are the only ones where someone talks to us about real situations and real economists like Adam Smith or Keynes,” becau...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
International Trade (Scottish Development International)
I have one further point and it, too, relates to mindset. I am a former university person, and I have had lots of university people on to me in the past couple of weeks about the behaviour of one particular university in Scotland about its modern language programmes. We are su...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
International Trade (Scottish Development International)
We had interesting interviews with people from small businesses who said that exporting was not the problem. Some of them preferred to export because it meant that they were not being held to ransom by supermarkets. Those who said that were Lossie Seafoods Ltd, Mackay’s Ltd, w...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
International Trade (Scottish Development International)
I could have done with a bit of narrative about specific company experiences in your report. There are a lot of generalised statistics in it, but not information about how particular companies fared in particular markets.I turn to an area that must be important, because it inc...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Committee
02 Mar 2011
International Trade (Scottish Development International)
I will ask about four areas. The first may have been asked about earlier. How much are you affected by fluctuations in currency levels when it comes to planning an export strategy? It has been extremely difficult to call the shots over the past three years.
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
23 Feb 2011
Migration and Trafficking
I, too, thank the Equal Opportunities Committee for its report and Margaret Mitchell for her lucid and liberal introduction.Having lived and worked as an economic migrant in Germany for more than 25 years, my experience has given me a certain insight into the problems that one...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
10 Feb 2011
Delayed Discharges
In asking my question, I speak as the carer, over the worst winter that we have ever had, of two 93-year-olds who have a valuable two hours’ carer time each day. I will not ask what would have happened if I had not come back in the snow in December, which walled us in at Melro...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
10 Feb 2011
Public Records (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
I congratulate Fiona Hyslop on bringing the Public Records (Scotland) Bill to Parliament. All of us have been made well aware of the fact that the bill was inspired by the Shaw report of 2007 into historical child abuse in residential and children’s homes. Those events were no...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
09 Feb 2011
Project Transmit
Would that still apply to decisions that relate to existing power supply from thermal stations?
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
09 Feb 2011
Project Transmit
Say you have about 5 million tonnes of coal going in and 10 million tonnes of CO2 coming out of your conventional thermal stations. Does that issue, as well as the very low efficiency of thermal stations—about 34 per cent if you are lucky—play a major role in calculating your ...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
09 Feb 2011
Project Transmit
How much do you calculate at the moment, in locational calculations about production that is centred on the big markets, based on the carbon output of your generating capacity?
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
09 Feb 2011
Project Transmit
I can dream on, given the whips and the budget decision.How aware are you of developments in the German energy market, which eventually will be non-nuclear once the last nuclear stations run out? Operations such as Volkswagen and LichtBlick are thinking about a type of google ...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
09 Feb 2011
Project Transmit
But surely European constraints will also bear on that. They will condemn Longannet and Cockenzie, say, within around 20 years. How much do European policies, European charging practices and, of course, the fact that European utilities now own a substantial amount of the Briti...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Committee
09 Feb 2011
Project Transmit
If you take an atlas of Europe, and centre on London a circle of 200 miles radius, you will see that two issues arise. One is that the circle extends well into northern France and the south of Belgium and includes heavily built-up power-requiring areas, such as Brussels. To th...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Feb 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
My points are on finance, environment, education and the role of the First Minister in all of this. The paradigm for how to organise such matters is Lloyd George’s Ministry of Munitions in the first world war. I also cite my experience of the Open University. What we will face...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Feb 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
The other subtext that we picked up on in Aberdeen in speaking to a range of different organisations is that people are having to deal with four separate ministries when it comes to renewables. People spoke about a level of co-ordination, but said that they are never certain w...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Feb 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
Back in April or May, we went to Brussels and Aberdeen. Part of the reason for our going to those places was to look at enterprise agencies and other agencies that promote trade in those areas. We found that in Flanders—not Belgium; one must be careful about that—the concentra...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Feb 2011
Energy Bill
I have one final point. In Germany, they are experimenting with something called the ZuhauseKraftwerk—the power station in your own house—which is promoted by Volkswagen and a company called LiftBlick in Hamburg. It consists of a Golf engine that heats two houses, generates po...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Feb 2011
Energy Bill
The question then is whether we put that power into hydrogen systems or whatever to be burned, or whether we think about reviving forms of electric central heating.11:45
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Feb 2011
Energy Bill
It seems to me that, as we take more power from the North Sea, it will come in the form of electricity.
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
02 Feb 2011
Energy Bill
Another issue, though, is type of heating. I am a veteran of the storage blocks that we had back in the 1970s. It seems that, to a great extent, the power provision that we are expecting from renewables will be electricity. Of course, we have required heating over and above ou...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Committee
02 Feb 2011
Energy Bill
My natural tendency is to look not at the planned development of things but at the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns that might come out and bite us, notably, of course, the price of gas, oil and other fuel. I do not notice much in the way of provision for worst-case sce...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
26 Jan 2011
Energy Bill
It strikes me that, when renewables gets into its stride, power is going to be supplied largely by electricity. On the other hand, heating at the moment is predominantly provided through oil and gas. We are heading towards peak oil, which already seems to be hitting. The $100 ...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
26 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
Yes. It has been replaced by large salary payouts that do nothing but concentrate power at the upper executive level and in dealings with similarly well-endowed bodies.
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
26 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
Geographically, councils are often of immense size and places at one end of, say, the Dumfries and Galloway council area—which, I should point out, is of moderate size—have no real fellow-feeling with people at the other end, whereas on the continent the communal idea is still...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Committee
26 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
This takes me back about 40 years, to when I was doing urban studies at the University of Edinburgh and looking with Geoffrey Best at the Victorian period and the creation of large-scale urban intervention. At the same time, we were looking towards what was going to be the Whe...
Christopher Harvie SNP Chamber
20 Jan 2011
Historic Environment (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3
No, I am just about to close.As meeting halls, community centres and museums, many historic buildings in Scotland can and do draw together communities and root them in their living environment and in history. Just think of what I hope will be 2011’s building of the year—that a...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
20 Jan 2011
Historic Environment (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3
Some members who are my age might remember the actor Moultrie Kelsall, the man who got all the gloomy Scots roles that did not go to John Laurie. He was also a pioneer foodie and no mean architectural critic. In the columns of The Scotsman he rounded frequently on those people...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
19 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
The Norwegians are planning a high-speed system for Norway, which will be very useful. You can imagine a direct line running from Bergen to Stavanger, going across the fjords, and the engineering details connected with that. It would be worth while to consult the Norwegians at...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
19 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
I will make various points about what I called earlier a collaborative advantage with major European industrial regions on renewables—which will convert quite a lot of fragile areas into potential energy powerhouses, although they will have many associated problems—and on tour...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
19 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
Energy is distributed over four or more different ministries in Scotland. Would you prefer to have something like a super-ministry that dealt with energy, given the amount of integration that will be required in the field?
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
19 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
I have two little points to make. First, as well as renewables, carbon capture and storage must be factored in as a transitional technology. There is 15 years’ worth of space under the North Sea that the CO2 can be stuffed into, and we must have a policy for that because we ha...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
19 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
That was the statement that I got from a representative of Siemens in Scotland.
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Committee
19 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
The various points that I want to make are based on analysis of your key priorities compared with the widest possible analysis of the general impact of renewables. I wonder whether a similar dialogue would have taken place in the 1960s on the marginal role that North Sea oil w...
Christopher Harvie SNP Chamber
19 Jan 2011
“Report on the public sector’s support for exporters, international trade and the attraction of inward investment”
That type of relational representation might well be better developed if we did it jointly with the Norwegians or the Germans, who have a direct interest in the exploitation of the North Sea. That is just a point for consideration.We also require innovative financial solutions...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
19 Jan 2011
“Report on the public sector’s support for exporters, international trade and the attraction of inward investment”
Scottish trade and investment are just as critical today as they were in the 1970s when oil and gas were first exploited in the North Sea.The low-carbon and renewables challenge alone is comprehensive. It involves leading-edge original research, which we do extremely well; ren...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
13 Jan 2011
Freight Facilities Grants
I congratulate Cathy Jamieson on the motion and her eloquent presentation of it. I also declare an interest as the honorary president of the Scottish Association for Public Transport.The debate is set against the background of great shifts in natural resources. The price of oi...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
12 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
I spent a day with Voith, as some of my graduates work for it. Voith is the biggest supplier of water turbines in the world and is very interested in our advance, because its principles of construction include locating construction nearest to the point of use. Indeed, it has b...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
12 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
There are qualifications to that. One is that Finland had a tremendous cathartic experience before the one you mentioned. It was an agricultural country in the 1930s and became an industrial country to supply reparations to the Russians. It remained thereafter the sort of Hong...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
12 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
I just mention that because I think that we have to start off by looking at where we are.“If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst”,as Hardy said, and the situation in Scotland is not very promising.Where can we get a structure of small and medium-size...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
12 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
It is just that I think that one ought to handle any of the legacy of Joseph Schumpeter with a lot of care. He was the same man who lauded the British way of industry and politics in “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy” as an impressive method of managing the transition from ...
Christopher Harvie SNP Committee
12 Jan 2011
Enterprise Network Inquiry
Did you mention “creative destruction” in relation to Finland?
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Committee
12 Jan 2011
United Kingdom Energy Policy
Have you factored into your forward projections the notion that we are entering a period in which there will be many more climatic events, notably, with the melting of the Arctic ice cap, inundation? The Thames barrier has been used more in the past couple of years than it has...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP Chamber
12 Jan 2011
“Report on Low Carbon Scotland: The Draft Report on Proposals and Policies”
I will deal with two themes: first, where we live; and, secondly, how we move. Housing construction has propelled our economy, keeping our bankers happy, but the United Kingdom’s average new house struggles to reach grade C on the EU’s thermal efficiency level and consumes twi...
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Chamber

Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2011

17 Mar 2011 · S3 · Meeting of the Parliament
Item of business
Bus Services Regulation
Harvie, Christopher SNP Mid Scotland and Fife Watch on SPTV
I am just about to do so. In fact, I only wish that the mass of Scottish commuters would use the bus. I have statistics from the energy efficiency action plan on the travel patterns of Stirling Council members and officials, which show that 82 per cent travelled by car; 11 per cent walked or ran, which is nice to know; and 6 per cent went by bus or train. In my part of Europe, 30 per cent go by bus or train, 30 per cent walk, run or bike and the remainder, which is about 30 per cent—this is in the heartland of Mercedes Benz—drive. That is how the situation in Scotland stands. We talk about bus services, but we are not brilliant examples of their organisation.

Since mid-February, the world’s economics have changed. I have predicted the end of the age of Henry Ford and could say with the best in Scotland, “Weel, ye ken noo,” when it happens, but I will not. We have to get out of this, but we are not well placed to do so. Amazingly, London can. Through massive public investment—£170 as against every £116 invested in Scotland—it has a public transport-served central business district. We do not have that.

I have one final point, although I can see that it will not win me many friends. Friends of the Earth Scotland has called for the signing of the new Forth crossing contracts to be postponed until after the election. Having my own project—the Borders railway line—to see through, I am prepared to support any other project, although I wanted a tunnel with high-speed rail capacity. However, the new Forth crossing is a high-petrol project and the $200 barrel of oil is on its way. Do we want to die slowly by garrotte, or do we want to be guillotined? Those could be the alternatives that are in front of us. I put that quite coldly in the final speech that I will make here. We are facing a totally unprecedented environmental and fuel situation. If we do not bear that in mind when we are making our investment decisions, we are in for very big trouble indeed.

10:36

In the same item of business

The Presiding Officer (Alex Fergusson) NPA
Good morning. The first item of business this morning is a Labour Party debate on motion S3M-8177, in the name of Charlie Gordon, on transport.09:15
Charlie Gordon (Glasgow Cathcart) (Lab) Lab
Our previous full-scale debate on local bus services was way back on 12 June 2008. That is not to say that Labour has not campaigned relentlessly before and ...
Robert Brown (Glasgow) (LD) LD
I am intrigued by Charlie Gordon’s direction of travel. He complains about market failure, but he seems to be suggesting that he is looking for market monopo...
Charlie Gordon Lab
Not for the first time, Mr Brown is wrong. If he listens for a bit longer, he will learn.The traffic commissioner continued:“Thus, Edinburgh has Lothian Bus ...
The Minister for Transport and Infrastructure (Keith Brown) SNP
Will the member take an intervention?
Charlie Gordon Lab
I am sorry, but I do not have time: maybe later. I pressed Mr Swinney at that meeting by asking:“Are you now saying that the deal that was done”—that was the...
The Minister for Transport and Infrastructure (Keith Brown) SNP
Today’s debate provides a timely opportunity to discuss the bus industry, assess its current status and consider what improvements can be made to ensure the ...
Karen Gillon (Clydesdale) (Lab) Lab
What?
Keith Brown SNP
It is on record.Earlier this year, we agreed changes to the reimbursement rate with the Confederation of Passenger Transport that make the scheme more sustai...
Jackson Carlaw (West of Scotland) (Con) Con
I was intrigued when news filtered out that Labour was to set aside the whole of this morning’s debate—the last major debate of this parliamentary session—fo...
Patrick Harvie (Glasgow) (Green) Green
Will the member give way?
Jackson Carlaw Con
I do not think that I will, today.Scotland’s bus industry is an important private sector contributor to our gross domestic product at a time when there is ar...
Alison McInnes (North East Scotland) (LD) LD
As Jackson Carlaw said, we have been here before. It is a bit like groundhog day.Charlie Gordon has revisited a proposal that he knows has no majority suppor...
Keith Brown SNP
Does Alison McInnes acknowledge that the bus route development scheme was not abolished, but was given to local authorities and mainstreamed into their funding?
Alison McInnes LD
It has been disaggregated to the point at which it is of little value to anyone. It is not enough to roll out new services and it has not been used in that w...
Karen Gillon (Clydesdale) (Lab) Lab
I thank Jackson Carlaw for his comments, as I have seldom had so many compliments in one speech. However, for the record, I am more of a Cliff Richard girl t...
Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP) SNP
Let me declare a personal interest in the debate: I am a bus card holder. I note that the only bus card holders who are likely to participate in the debate a...
Elaine Smith (Coatbridge and Chryston) (Lab) Lab
The issue of transport, and in particular buses, is extremely important to people in my constituency and in similar communities throughout Scotland that rely...
Stewart Stevenson SNP
Will Elaine Smith take an intervention?
Elaine Smith Lab
No, thank you—Stewart Stevenson had the opportunity as a minister to put guards on the trains.In a transport debate, I cannot miss the opportunity to mention...
The Deputy Presiding Officer (Alasdair Morgan) SNP
Order. I hope that Elaine Smith will return to buses, which seem to me to be the subject of the motion.
Elaine Smith Lab
I certainly will, but we need to consider transport in the round to see how important buses are.The number of trains from Coatbridge to Edinburgh on the new ...
Rob Gibson (Highlands and Islands) (SNP) SNP
For the avoidance of doubt, the question of bus regulation was not ever in the SNP manifesto.In the debate, we are trying to look forward to find ways to ens...
Robert Brown (Glasgow) (LD) LD
I am grateful to Charlie Gordon for focusing on bus travel in the last party debate before the election. However, as I said in an intervention, there is a co...
Charlie Gordon Lab
I cited the transport commissioner, who described most of the bus scene in Scotland as a monopoly and near-monopoly city and county arrangement. Does the mem...
Robert Brown LD
No, I am trying to put the issue into context and to explain the deficiency at the heart of the member’s proposition.I will say a little more about Glasgow. ...
Keith Brown SNP
Could Robert Brown explain how his party’s policy of doing away with concessionary travel support will help more women to use the buses?
Robert Brown LD
Perhaps the minister should read the policy. We have certainly said that there is a need to consider whether people such as me are entitled—as Stewart Steven...
Des McNulty (Clydebank and Milngavie) (Lab) Lab
A fortnight ago, we had a by-election in Clydebank—in the Duntocher, Faifley and Hardgate ward. The key issue in that by-election was buses, specifically the...
Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP) SNP
I declare that I am president of the Scottish Association for Public Transport, which has provided a memo for members setting out a useful range of pragmatic...