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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Displaying 4060 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
There is, of course, an argument for additional taxation that is being made by some people. The difficulty is that that does not seem to take behavioural change into account at all. People seem to think that, if tax is increased by X amount, the revenue to the Scottish Government will indeed be X although , in fact, that is not the case.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Point taken.
Finally from me, when we debate the budget in the chamber, we will no doubt have the usual demands for vast increases in expenditure across every portfolio accompanied either by tax cuts or—who knows?—possibly tax rises. In the 26 days since your budget statement, which political parties have approached you asking to meet to discuss alternative proposals? Of those that do, will you insist that demands for increased spending in one area of the budget are met by identified reductions elsewhere or by specific tax rises in order to meet them, to ensure a balanced budget?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I just wanted to know if you had been approached by them. I would not expect them to turn up at your house on new year’s day to first foot you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I am just trying to put it into context with where the rest of the Scottish consolidated fund is going to be spent. Not many areas are going to get the level of increase that each one of the office-holders has done.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I do not want to spend a lot of time on this, but ÂŁ242,000 is the increase for the SCHR. You mentioned two additional members of staff, but surely there must be more to it than that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
What developments do you envisage from that in terms of enhanced public engagement?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
And the good news is: no new website on the way.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
If you had not done that, there would have been very severe impacts on the budget.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
In the draft budget, the Scottish Government’s priorities were re-emphasised. You mentioned those priorities earlier: ending child poverty, ensuring sustainable public services and accelerating the transition to net zero. What happened to the commitment to sustainable economic growth, which is necessary to pay for all that? There was no mention of it in the budget statement. The draft budget document suggests as a national outcome that
“We have a globally competitive, entrepreneurial, inclusive and sustainable economy”,
but there is no detail on how that will be achieved.
Thanks to the economic turmoil that was exacerbated by the UK Government’s disastrous decisions in the autumn, the UK is now in recession, so how can the Scottish Government sustain rapidly rising benefits that will be £1.4 billion higher than they would have been if they had not been devolved with a shrinking economy, a fall in the working-age population and low productivity growth?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Kenneth Gibson
The Scottish child payment has had a phenomenally positive impact on the 400,000 children whose parents are receiving it; it has made a significant difference. The whole point of having anti-poverty strategies is that people are eventually lifted out of poverty, and I know that, next year, the Scottish Government will spend more on employability than it originally intended to. If we are going to spend more on anti-poverty measures, by what year does the Scottish Government expect the work to lower child poverty to succeed to the extent that welfare expenditure will begin to decline?
