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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 1622 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you. There is a bit more detail that it would be useful to have about how things are working specifically. I am aware that there has been a lot of reworking of the determination of the loan book at UK Government level. It has been through a number of iterations, and there is some sleight of hand there in accounting terms, which I am aware of, too. That is probably a technical term that I should not have used.
In some respects that does not matter. What interests me is why we should care. In other words, what, specifically, has this got to do with the Scottish budget? Why are we having this technical change of £298.7 million appearing for us—given that it is a loan book—while we do not have student loans in Scotland? That is what I do not understand.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
So it really is just a technical thing. It is not—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
In asking this question, I acknowledge that the year-end processes are complex at this level across this number of budget lines. That is taken as a given. We get a lot of commentary that the way in which the fiscal framework works is inefficient, and that means that there is a cost to the public purse. I suppose that is what I am driving at: the constant changes—stuff coming in from left field—are incurring a cost, and that is inefficient for public sector expenditure. That is the reason why I am asking this, rather than any other reason.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
To go back to the point about trying to apportion some amount to the loss as a result of that bidding, it strikes me that that might be a useful exercise, because I am concerned that it is happening more frequently.
I want to pick up on another point. You may be suggesting where the differences lie between funding from the UK Government to the Scottish Government and from the Scottish Government to councils, in that the Scottish Government, with its universal policies, is not subjecting local councils to bidding. It is simply saying, “This is a pot of money that has to be spent in the same way.” To go back to Liz Smith’s point, we are not actually comparing like with like, are we?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
I suppose that that is what I wanted to explore. I apologise for using the term “sleight of hand”—what I meant was that, in my understanding, there is an accounting mechanism to reflect that the loans are not truly loans in a traditional sense, and the public accounting of them is slightly different.
Notwithstanding that, I still do not understand the direct relevance to the Scottish budget of that treatment, which has been applied across the board. I would also like to know how, specifically, it is being applied to the Scottish budget. Are those real numbers, in a technical sense? Are they really based on Scottish loans or are they an apportionment based on population share? In other words, is the number that we are discussing real, and what does it really mean for us?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
I get that. I have a last wee question, because I am aware that my colleague wants to come back in and explore this area.
With regard to the loans themselves, I note what you are saying about the historical situation in Scotland; that applies to Scottish loans simply because they run over 30 years, as I understand it. It does not have any relationship to Scottish students who, for example, studied in England and have now come back and become Scottish taxpayers. I am assuming that it is simply a picture of the loan book at a point in time when those loans were taken out.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for all that—it is helpful. I have a last wee quick question, which I hope that you can answer quite quickly. How confident are you in your ability to bring down the bill for contractors? I am thinking specifically about your budgeting for keeping the show on the road. From my experience in a previous life, I know that that is always extremely difficult, because IT bought-in costs are always going up and it is difficult to keep people.
A quick answer is fine.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
I hear what you are saying about the transition—it is very clear. It would be helpful for me to understand what applications and coding skills you are talking about. I guess that your ability to grow people, particularly when you get into complex bug fixing, is an essential part of keeping the show on the road, but is there a bespoke application? What sort of coding skills are required?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Yes—good morning and thanks for coming along, Jennifer. I want to explore a wee bit more about the IT contractors. Your annual accounts give the costs
“primarily to meet the digital requirements of updating legacy IT systems and evolving our IT estate onto a long-term sustainable basis”
as about ÂŁ132,000 a year, which looks to me like folk working for 11 months a year on a day rate of ÂŁ600, roughly.
How, specifically, do you plan to do what you have set out and get the crossover that you have alluded to—building the skills of the permanent staff while starting to move the fairly high numbers for contractors. Can you tell me a wee bit more about that?
