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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 3510 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26 (United Kingdom Context)
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
It is greatly appreciated that you have come here in person. It makes a big difference to our scrutiny. Thank you very much.
That finishes the public part of our meeting. I will call a five-minute break to enable our witnesses, broadcasting staff and official report staff to leave.
11:16 Meeting continued in private until 12:14.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26 (United Kingdom Context)
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
You have said that a quarter of a million employers gain from the budget, 940,000 employers lose out and 820,000 employers see no change.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26 (United Kingdom Context)
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
In table 2.1 on page 19, you say that from 2019 up to 2028, GDP is expected to rise by a cumulative 4.3 per cent, which puts the 4 per cent impact of Brexit into some context. Just over 4 per cent in nine years is kind of pitiful, really. The UK economy appears to be somewhat atherosclerotic, because in table A.1 on page 168, you say that the
“World GDP at purchasing power parity”
is expected to grow between 3.1 per cent and 3.3 per cent from 2023 onwards, which is more than six times that of the UK. What is your perspective on that, and how can we break that cycle of stagnation?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26 (United Kingdom Context)
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
In your “Economic and fiscal outlook” report, you say:
“The outlook for productivity growth remains our most important and uncertain forecast judgement.”
You go on to say:
“The effects of subdued investment, the energy price shock, and Brexit compound the ongoing weakness seen since the financial crisis.”
Productivity growth is of great concern to the committee; we have raised it on numerous occasions in numerous fora with different people. How can we break the productivity bottleneck? You have also raised concerns about the number of people who are economically inactive. As a percentage of the population, there are now more people who are economically inactive in Scotland than there are in the UK.
Do you see the way to break the productivity problem being through technology and migration? What impact is demography—the ageing of the indigenous population, if you want to put it that way, or the people who live here already—having on productivity? One would think that migration and technological advances would improve productivity, but an ageing population is creating a drag on it.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26 (United Kingdom Context)
Meeting date: 26 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
In your Scottish report, you touch on a couple of issues—air passenger duty, and the final timing for that, and VAT assignment. To this committee, the latter is a dog that just will not die. The committee has made it clear to the Scottish Government that, although it might have been in the Smith commission report, we do not see any advantage whatsoever to assignment of VAT. We could argue about whether or not it should be devolved. In section 8 of the report, you say:
“The formal methodology for VAT assignment is being developed by HMRC, the Treasury and the Scottish Government.”
Is there any point in progressing any further with that? The committee does not see that there is.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
We could be talking about £100 million over three years, which is a very significant amount of money, and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities is obviously nervous about where those funds will be sourced from. It is looking for a guarantee that local government will not be left carrying the can, which is why I asked you whether you think that the funding should be ring fenced. You might be able to set up a trust, and money might come from PEF, but it does not seem to me that that represents a guaranteed source of funding year in, year out, so to speak.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
Other colleagues will want to explore some issues further, including one or two that I have not touched on. However, there is one further thing from me. Today, your Holyrood leader called for tax cuts of £1 billion a year. Your party has also called on the Scottish Government to mitigate a number of things such as the situation on winter fuel payments. If we have £1 billion in tax cuts and we mitigate here, there and everywhere—national insurance, blah, blah, blah—where would the bill fit into the list of priorities in a budget in which there would be less money to spend?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
We fully appreciate that and, all else being equal, I do not think there would be any argument at all against it. However, we must look at the budget, at teacher numbers and at the cost of outdoor provision. Where do you sit on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
I think that the issue is the indefinite nature of that sort of funding. Trusts might or might not come in, but the question is how to sustain that funding year in, year out.
I have one other question about the issue of timescales, which was touched on earlier. You are keen for this to start in 2026, but I have to say that there seems to be no build-up to it. The costings suggest almost full delivery in year 1, and I cannot see how that can possibly happen, given that some facilities will have to be refurbished and additional facilities will surely have to come online. Would it not be better for the provision to be scaled up over, say, three years?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 19 November 2024
Kenneth Gibson
I was thinking exactly the same thing, funnily enough.
