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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 3475 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
All members of the committee are keen for better outcomes to be achieved, regardless of which area we are looking at. We all want to see better outcomes for the money that is invested, and anything that can help to deliver that will be very welcome.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Indeed. I suppose that it is like football in that you do not necessarily judge a team on one match. However, if there is a league table of countries—or of devolved Parliaments or sub-state legislatures—where would Scotland be, and who would be at the top?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You have raised concerns that, for example, the Scottish Government is still insisting on maintaining a level of teacher numbers, which COSLA does not think is necessary. Is that a cause of continued tension? Where are we with those discussions?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That is fine.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That is not the final point that you want to make, is it, Dave?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you for that. Finally, I call John Wood.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I do not think that anyone is saying we should not bother. I am just saying that there must be a realistic idea of what the level of engagement is likely to be. No one is more interested in having a wider discourse about the budget than the finance committee of the Scottish Parliament. None of us wants to see fewer people engaging. We want to see more people engaging.
Everyone in the committee gets excited when we see that a tweet on something that we have done has reached 5,000 people or 10,000 people. Folk recognise the work that we do because this committee works hard and is dedicated to doing the best job possible. All that I am trying to suggest is that people are never going to say, “Did you watch a match last night?” “Never mind the match. What about the block grant adjustment committee?”
I understand what you are saying about trying to make things simpler, and the Scottish Fiscal Commission has done a lot to make things very presentable and accessible, but you can take a horse to water—if you know what I mean. There are real issues, so I am looking for practical steps to see how we can do that engagement. I am thinking about the budget cycle and all its moving parts. Can that be done to the extent that it would involve a much larger group of people? If it can, this committee would buy into it—obviously we would.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Short, sharp and to the point.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Okay. Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
What do you consider to be realistic? The Government could say that the average public sector worker in Scotland is paid £2,300 more than public sector workers down south. The sector makes up 22 per cent of the Scottish workforce compared to 17 per cent down south, so it is already a larger sector, and, relatively speaking, it is better paid. What would be realistic? The Government suggested 9 per cent over three years. Of course, inflation could be 1 per cent a year or 5 per cent a year—that is one of the obvious difficulties with multiyear settlements. What do you consider to be realistic?
