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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
One could argue that a teacher, half of whose salary over 拢43,000 goes on tax and national insurance, might have to decide whether they can afford an extra child, because they do not have access to those additional funds. Many people who are in work resent that, which is why the policy is unpopular with the majority of voters, as all polls have shown. People who are working have to decide whether they can afford another child, and they see鈥攔ightly or wrongly鈥攖hat people who are not working might be able to access benefits that they cannot in relation to deciding whether to expand their family.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That is absolutely fine鈥攖hey were comprehensive. In fact, opening statements make life easier for the committee, because they answer some of the questions that we would probably have asked anyway. They also lead to other questions, the most obvious of which is why the 拢2 million for the Electoral Commission was not included in the indicative costs. It is pretty obvious that there is going to be an election next year, so it seems bizarre that the sum was not included in the indicative costs for 2025-26.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
How much is that worth in the current year?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
The new committee is looking at that, and it will have to address it as part of its remit.
I go back to the issue of AWE versus ASHE. I know that none of my MSP colleagues are dead keen to get involved in that particular issue, so I suppose, as convener, I will. It is heads we lose, tails we lose, is it not? When it came out, a couple of years ago, the ASHE index was about 1.7 per cent when inflation was 11 per cent. Jackson Carlaw, you had a twinkle in your eye when you said that it will probably reverse next year. It has not really reversed, and now it has gone the other way. MSP salaries have gone up by 12 per cent in the past five years, compared with inflation at 25 per cent. Was it just for public consumption reasons or for other, financial reasons that you decided to stick with AWE?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
The staff pay increase in the forthcoming year is also based on the figure of 3.2 per cent, which means that it is difficult to have, for example, in-grade promotions for the advancement of staff members. Why has it been decided to abandon the ASHE-AWE combo for staff?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
There certainly have been improvements in relation to the autumn and spring revisions. I raised the issue last year, however, and although you said that it would be changed, nothing has been changed. That is why I raise it again, and I hope not to have to raise it again next year.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
How much of next year鈥檚 budget will involve mitigation of United Kingdom Government policies, and what is the impact of that on devolved services?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Scotland has an economic performance gap whereby slower economic growth means that Scotland will raise 拢1,676 million more in income tax in 2025-26 than if it was following UK policies but will benefit by only 拢838 million. What steps are being taken to close that economic performance gap?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Is that being done as a result of incidents such as the murders of David Amess and Jo Cox?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Tax revenue is going up because of fiscal drag as much as anything else. The gap needs to close so that the amount that is raised in extra taxes is spent on services, because only half is being spent on services at the moment.
On a very much related issue, in education, the workforce, infrastructure and digital budget has more than doubled鈥攊t has increased by 114 per cent to 拢586 million. I am not sure what that entails, so you might want to provide a wee bit more detail, but the increase certainly seems very positive.
However, college budgets have been reduced yet again鈥攁ccording to Audit Scotland, they have fallen by 17 per cent in real terms in four years. In my area, Ayrshire College needs additional revenue to deliver 250 training places for the aerospace sector. It is anticipated that, over the next few years, 3,500 jobs will be created at Hunterston, backed by 拢3.5 billion of investment. However, at present, Ayrshire College faces reducing the number of engineering apprentices, despite employers requesting 50 more places than have been funded.
I take on board what you have said about money going into areas such as reducing child poverty, but people in deprived areas who could have opportunities to get high-quality engineering apprenticeships are not getting them because such apprenticeships are not being funded properly. How do we boost the economy, close the employment gap and give people a better future if Ayrshire College and others are expected to make year-on-year savings by reducing the number of engineering apprenticeships, for example?
