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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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 1428 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
The Minister for Housing is looking at what the business model might be for levering in additional investment. The situation might look a bit different from the traditional delivery that housing associations, which raise private investment to deliver on their targets, will continue to provide.
We are looking at whether there is scope to lever in additional investment, underpinned by Scottish Government investment, for particular delivery models, such as those for mid-market rents. The Minister for Housing has been working on that for some time. Once that work has come to a conclusion, he will set out in more detail what that might look like.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
That is not an unreasonable suggestion. It might not be a bad idea to have some kind of note to explain why that amount is not part of the purchasing power of the budget that is being given to higher education student support but is really an accounting issue.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
That is a good point. When we are looking at the financial position of an organisation, we cannot ignore it reserves. For example, Strathclyde Passenger Transport鈥檚 very significant reserves were a point that was taken into account when it came to looking at its budget settlement. Money is money. If organisations are sitting on large reserves, that should be seen as part of the public purse.
We would be sympathetic to an organisation that has built up reserves for a purpose. An organisation might be taking forward a considerable piece of work or undergoing reform and is going to use reserves for that purpose, or it might have an investment plan that is going to spike and it has reserves that will be part of its investment plan for that particular period. All those things will be taken into consideration when it comes to a decision on whether the organisation should be required to use reserves.
If the point of reserves is that they are there to be deployed in times of budgetary constraint, this is such a time when they need to be brought into the picture. The short answer to your question is that, yes, reserves are being considered. The individual discussions with public bodies around their size and shape, their function and their investment plans will include the level of their reserve.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
Part of that is SFC work, and it is important that it puts that through its analysis before giving us the figures for any tax take. It is already based on the potential for behaviour change, which is important. However, it is not just SFC work. HMRC鈥檚 work will also be important in that external analysis. It is looking at two separate pieces of analysis. The first is a data set that covers the incomes and locations of UK taxpayers over a 12-year period up to 2021-22. That looks at historic trends of intra-UK migration of taxpayers at different income levels and whether any obvious factors have impacted trends. The second expands on its 2021 empirical study on taxable income elasticities by considering responses in labour market participation and intra-UK migration to the 2018-19 income tax reform. Both pieces of work will make an important contribution to the debate.
There will always be an element of uncertainty about the impact that past policy changes have had. No evidence of substantial behavioural change has been presented to us, but that independent analysis is important work. As I mentioned, there is still a net in-migration of taxpayers to Scotland from elsewhere in the UK, which is positive. We need to drill down more to see whether there is any differential in the levels of earnings that people have and so on. We will keep that under review, and we look forward to HMRC publishing its work.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
I guess that that is recognition that, if there are fewer places for university students, that could pose a risk to those from less well-off backgrounds. It is therefore important that we maintain opportunities for access to university and the non-traditional routes that support students from less well-off backgrounds, in order to ensure that, through our policies, the risks that have been identified do not necessarily come to fruition.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
Part of the challenge of having a hybrid system and incomplete devolution of tax powers is that anomalies will exist. The Fraser of Allander Institute said that addressing the specific point that you have made would require significant changes to the basic and intermediate rates. The process around that, let alone the impact, will be brought into sharp focus if further tax changes are made in the spring budget, for example. Changes at that very advanced point in our budget process inevitably impact on the tax and spend decisions of the Scottish Parliament.
To say that it is not an ideal system is probably the understatement of the year. It is far from ideal. Among all that complexity, we have tried to carve out a more progressive system, but there are areas that rub up against the UK system in a way that is not ideal. There is no getting away from that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
Some errors always occur, which is regrettable. Discussions have taken place with Clyde Gateway over the Christmas and new year period to ensure that it understands the budgetary position. The volume of information and the changes that are inevitably made can sometimes lead to errors such as that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
We will, of course, continue to consider such things. The difficulty is that, if I was sitting here with 拢350 million unallocated in a certain fund, I imagine that there would, understandably, be calls for that money to be deployed in order to avoid some difficult decisions. Given our constraints and lack of fiscal levers, we are in a tight fiscal position. Our preference would, of course, be for that position to change, so that we could build capacity in a reserve or fund for infrastructure investment or particular projects in future years. However, I cannot guarantee that that will be the case, given the outlook that you have described. Whether it is the current UK Government continuing with its fiscal priorities or an alternative Government sticking to similar spending plans, as looks likely, that does not bode well for the Scottish budget being anything other than fiscally tight for some time to come. However, in principle, I do not disagree with what you have said.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
It is not us putting additional money into student support, albeit that that would not be a bad thing to do. It is because of that AME.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
Given the current climate, it is challenging to disaggregate what the factors are.