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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 1467 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
It is an increase of about £11 million, so it is not of the scale that was originally envisaged.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
The delivery plans were published in October.
We will make a judgment about the report’s publication, but it will be during this calendar year.
The other thing—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
As Mr MacDonald correctly identifies, there are now more businesses benefiting from the small business bonus scheme than there were when we set out that scheme. I should point out that we have put in place further incentives in the non-domestic rates scheme for companies involved in renewables to try to tailor the relief package and encourage more development. I expect the number of properties that will benefit from business rates to be about 100,000. We also have some transitional relief available for small companies in that respect.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
These commitments have the hallmark of being part of the fabric of our proposition, but we have to make an active choice to maintain such schemes. The Government has considered the issues that have been raised in this area of policy and determined that our small business community continues to require that degree of support.
We have tried to address some of the issues through the design of the transitional relief scheme that is available, and we constantly monitor and assess the continued appropriateness of the companies that are involved in the small business bonus scheme and the appropriate levels at which business rates relief should be set. Some of the thinking from the Fraser of Allander Institute helps us in that respect.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
On the first part of your question, I would be very surprised if we do not end up in such a position as a consequence of what Ana Stewart recommends to us. I am simply trying to get my process correct: we have commissioned the review and we will hear what the outcome is. I would be absolutely staggered if we do not end up taking specific measures to enhance the participation of women in entrepreneurialism as a consequence of Ana Stewart’s review. I think that that is highly likely but, regardless of what the review produces, the Government is committed to taking such action. That is why we have commissioned Ana Stewart to do the work that she is undertaking.
Your question about conditionality is much wider. If I play back what you were proposing, that would mean that, in the future, we would fund Scottish Enterprise only if it met particular targets on particular aspects of women’s participation in entrepreneurialism. There is nothing wrong with that as an idea, but I think that it would have wider implications for the future sustainability of organisations such as Scottish Enterprise.
We have not used the conditional funding model for public sector agencies. I am not saying that there is not an argument for it; there is a perfectly legitimate argument for it. Indeed, it might be a way of prompting the type of performance outcomes that we want to achieve, so I am not dismissing it. I am simply saying that it would require wide consideration of the nature of public expenditure and how we go about that. I think that Parliament would have some pretty broad views about that.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
I am required to give the committee honest answers. I hope that that is the last that we will have to contribute for the construction of vessels 801 and 802.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
And we do it.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
I highlight one of the big lessons that I have learned during my time in the Government, which relates to what happens if we do not look comprehensively at what every area can contribute to a policy objective. A good example is the child poverty delivery plan. To put it simply, we might think, for example, that we can tackle child poverty by increasing benefit payments. If we took that view, we would not have a particularly effective anti-child poverty strategy, because we would miss out on a range of other interventions that the Government and various organisations could make to support that objective.
When we formulated the child poverty delivery plan, we actively challenged different Government departments about how they were working, how they were interacting with people who were living in poverty and what further support they could put in place to assist those people and enable us to achieve the wider objectives. To me, that represents some of the challenges that exist.
Off the top of my head, I cannot think of an area in which we need to do more in that respect, but if there are issues on the minds of committee members, I would be happy to listen to those.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
John Swinney
We remain committed to the policy concept of a women’s business centre. However, for completeness, it would be best to consider how we will take that forward in light of the review by Ana Stewart, once we have received it.
