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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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Do I personally feel that it would help? No, not particularly. I do not think that it would help, but others may have another perspective on that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
How would you suggest we do that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I must say that you are making a lot of my colleagues nervous with the continued use of the word “reform”.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That is what I was going to suggest. The other issue, of course, is that the Government has said that it will agree to the committee’s request for a fiscal sustainability debate every year, so that we can look to long-term planning.
I want to ask Carmen Martinez about the medium-term financial strategy. You say in your submission:
“We are not aware of the MTFS being used regularly by the committees. Ideally, it should help them identify any risks that could be in the way of achieving their portfolios’ policy objectives.”
You go on to say:
“The MTFS should encourage committees to think beyond the immediate, current political term, to debate how to plan for the policy challenges facing Scotland.”
One of the concerns that we have with committees is that they are overwhelmed with work as it is and, frankly, they are leaving the Finance and Public Administration Committee to do most of the heavy lifting on scrutiny. We should be doing a big chunk of the heavy lifting, but I do not think they are putting in the shift that they perhaps should in this area. How can we move that along with committees?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Okay. Alison Hosie, you say in your submission:
“Several barriers continue to limit the effectiveness of the budget process. One ... issue is the timing of engagement, which often occurs too late to allow for meaningful external contributions. By the time consultations take place, key decisions have already been made”.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
We try to pick up some of the areas where money is unspent in our scrutiny of the autumn and spring budget revisions, and the fact is that it tends not to be unspent; it tends to be transferred to other portfolios where there is much more pressure.
I would also note that, in 2011, the Government provided £500 million over three years for preventative spend but one of the issues and difficulties that we came up against was that there seemed to be no disinvestment in areas where expenditure had been less effective. People were obstinately spending money where they were not getting any return or any of the outcomes that one would have expected, so such approaches tended not to continue. I should say that John Mason has been messianic about preventative spend for many years—haven’t you, John?—and the committee supports its use wherever it can be implemented.
Did you want to comment, Carmen?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thanks very much, folks. I do not have anyone else down to ask questions, but I do want to give you all an opportunity to make a final point before we wind up. If there are any points that you feel that we have not touched on or that we have not touched on enough—I will let you in in a second, John—please make them now. I would like people to be able to make some final remarks.
As he opened for us, John Wood will be the last person to speak. To our other guests, I say that, if you want to make any final points on any issue in this inquiry, please do so—although you do not have to, of course.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I agree completely. Local authorities sometimes put out flyers that say, “This is how much money we raise and this is where we get it from,” because a lot of people think that the overwhelming majority of it is raised by council tax, fees, charges, grants and so on. Then they will say, “This is what we spend it on.” You see that information sporadically, and I do not know what attention is paid to it. I think that there have been efforts over many years.
Carmen, how would you suggest that we engage further with the wider population outside the parliamentary stakeholder bubble?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Who should we look to in those categories? What countries should we look to?
