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 3475 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Replacing European Union Structural Funds
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you for that. I will now open the meeting to colleagues around the table. The first to ask questions will be Liz Smith, followed by Daniel Johnson.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Good morning. In your letter to me of 29 January 2022, you said that the ÂŁ120 million was:
“only possible following an update in recent days from the UK Treasury regarding our 2021-22 funding”
and that
“this £120 million is not being allocated in 2021-22”.
You also said:
“I appreciate this contingency on the UK fiscal cycle is challenging for scrutiny of the Scottish Budget, and would reiterate that it is no less challenging for the Scottish Government’s own financial and policy planning.”
Will you confirm that it is new money?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Michelle Thomson wants to come in.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I will now open out the session to colleagues.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I would be delighted by that. That is a very helpful suggestion.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Unless, of course, other lines of the budget were reduced to meet those costs. Would that be the case?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
We seem to be doing this dance increasingly as the years go by, which I do not think is satisfactory for anyone concerned. It must be really difficult for you to put together a budget when you have possibles or maybes but no definites until more or less the last minute.
On 12 January, there was a joint statement from all three devolved Governments, according to which
“Finance Ministers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ... called on the Treasury to guarantee that money allocated to support Covid responses will be provided in full, following a meeting with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.”
The statement goes on to say:
“The devolved governments are concerned they may not be granted permission to carry over into next year’s budgets any late consequential payments—despite this flexibility being provided in 2021/22.”
You have said that
“along with the other devolved administrations, the Scottish Government remains concerned that the additional funding we have received to mitigate the impact of ... Omicron ... may be subject to future deductions ... More fundamentally, the situation highlights once again that it is not tenable for funding only to be triggered by public health decisions in England.”
I also note that, in support of that, the Welsh finance minister Rebecca Evans said:
“the Treasury hesitated before providing Wales with funding to meet the challenges. When funding did come, we received no guarantee that it would not need to be returned”,
while Conor Murphy, your equivalent in Northern Ireland, said:
“the uncertainty surrounding the Covid funding provided by Treasury is unhelpful. It is ... hugely concerning that Treasury may not permit funding to be carried into next year even if additional funding is confirmed at such a late stage that it prevents it being used most effectively.”
What has been the response from the Treasury in the three weeks that have elapsed since that joint statement was issued? Do you believe—or hope—that we will be on a firmer footing in future?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
What is interesting about Scotland in economic terms, though, is its disparity. Some areas are doing phenomenally well while others are clearly not. Will the national strategy for economic transformation focus specifically on levelling up—to use a phrase—areas of Scotland that are not doing as well as the best areas? After all, what we do not want in future is for certain areas of Scotland to lag significantly behind, because that will just lead to all sorts of demographic challenges in the country, with, for example, large numbers of young educated people leaving poorer areas for areas that are already under a lot of pressure with regard to housing and so on and thus causing an imbalance. Will the strategy focus on such issues?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
You talked about the size of the budget. The Scottish Fiscal Commission said that there is a 5.2 per cent reduction in real terms to the Scottish budget. Am I correct in thinking that the ÂŁ120 million represents about 0.2 or 0.3 per cent of the budget?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kenneth Gibson
In paragraph 108 of our report, we talked about the costs of social security. In your response, you said:
“Difficult decisions will have to be made regarding any new policies, ensuring they are affordable and deliver value for money for the public purse.”
The Scottish Government has deliberately made its social security payments more generous than the UK Government’s, and it has encouraged uptake. How are the difficult decisions that are being made assessed? For example, when you look at £1 of public money, do you consider the gearing effect—how every pound that is spent will have a greater impact in the rest of the economy? How are those assessments made?
