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 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.
Displaying 1622 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
Thank you. My final question is about an issue on which I want to get a sense of your thinking. I have been doing work to examine the implications, or rather the risks, of looking at some of the work that we need to do to get to net zero in isolation, without taking cognisance of the financial elements. Part of the reason for why we have landed where we have is that while this Parliament can look at the issue from a policy perspective, much of the financial side is reserved. There seems to be a clear mismatch.
I always bring to mind the fact that this is a deeply serious issue. Recently, the Scottish Fiscal Commission, drawing on information from the Office for Budget Responsibility, stated that we can expect the debt to gross domestic product ratio to be at 289 per cent as a result of funding all these projects. How do you think that we will be able to square that off? We will not be able to do it without the money if we end up in a position—as you outlined in relation to the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill, for example—where we cannot move forward. That is one small example, but it strikes me that the issue is one that is not being talked about much. We will not be able to make progress on it without considering the financial structuring and so on.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I have a couple more questions—thank you for bearing with me. I would like to get a sense of things in the light of the new governmental structure and the new ministers—I am thinking, in particular, of Ivan McKee. Have you had any discussions thus far about public sector reform? Have you been given a steer on what he might be looking to do, given that we have all recognised that public sector reform needs to be undertaken? For example, the number of quangos that we have seems way out of kilter with the wider fiscal environment. Have you managed to have any initial discussions about what is intended?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I have one quick question. Thank you very much for being here. It has been an extremely informative session.
I was particularly taken by Lynda Towers’s compelling articulation of the considerations of different types of rights. As you know, we spoke to the permanent secretary in our earlier session. The committee has struggled to get people to think beyond their own silos—they think that their commission or commissioner is good—and look at things across the piece. My question is for Lynda Towers only. If the Government is advocating for the creation of a particular commissioner, how should things be looked at across the piece, as you so clearly articulated?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I am sorry, but other members want to come in.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
If you do not mind me interrupting, the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill is a good example, because of the uncertainty of funding. It is more appropriate to concentrate on bills where there is not that same uncertainty. For example, with the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, I recognise that the bill team and the minister did a lot of work to address our concerns around the FM and so on, but we still face the risk that there will be a considerable uptick in spend that the Parliament and members will have much more limited opportunity to scrutinise. The details that you have outlined were about how you will monitor and the general governance. That may well address your concern, but it does not address our concern as to how we scrutinise things. What risks therein have you articulated and how are you managing them?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I certainly look forward to hearing from you, with a focus on the generic risks and so on rather than the specific ones, because we are seeing a pattern emerging.
I will move on. I want to ask your thoughts on an issue relating to the emergency budget review. I have previously raised a question about the moneys from the ScotWind auction being used for day-to-day revenue. From the point of view of fiscal sustainability, is the fact that the ÂŁ700 million and the ÂŁ56 million have been folded in a lost opportunity to start to embed more fiscal sustainability?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
I think that what you are articulating is that there is a renewed appetite for such reform. Is that correct?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
That goes back to the convener’s point. Let us have something a little more specific than “making progress”.
10:30Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
Thank you very much. That is very clear.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 May 2024
Michelle Thomson
The fundamental point is that in no way will that scrutiny be to the same level of detail as the committee would apply on an FM up front. We often go through things line by line and say, “This is what it started off at, and this is now what it has arrived at.” That is exactly my point. How are you assessing, managing and mitigating the risk of a diminished amount of parliamentary scrutiny once we have been through the process? Setting aside some of the issues with that particular FM, the point applies generally when you are using agile methodologies. From your response, I am not entirely clear exactly how you are assessing, quantifying and mitigating that risk from a parliamentary perspective.