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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
If you search by an individual session, the list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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.
Displaying 1222 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Liz Smith
Is that part of the negotiations for the new fiscal framework that you are looking at?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Liz Smith
Do you have an update on the timing of the independent report?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Liz Smith
Convener, it would be helpful if we had a little more detail about some of these things.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Liz Smith
Well, you just gave a good example. In the transport budget, specific changes have been made that you had thought might be included but which did not have to be. It would be helpful to know what the other ones were.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Liz Smith
Right, and that comes to the total of £191 million—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Liz Smith
It is just that, if somebody genuinely has not engaged in the activities of which they have been accused, it is good for the public to know why it was a wrong accusation. It helps that person to move on, rather than just to be named and it stated that a complaint was made against them but was not upheld. That leaves just a bit of doubt in the mind of that person.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Liz Smith
On that same point, am I right that the procedure that would be followed is very similar to that of the Ethical Standards Commissioner in that, if a complaint is made about somebody, the commissioner is duty bound to find out whether the complaint should proceed by contacting the person and asking for evidence and by asking for evidence from the complainant? It is then the commissioner’s judgment whether it should become a formal complaint. Is that pretty much the same procedure that you are asking for?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Liz Smith
Yes, I very much do. I do not doubt that there will be conversations—of course there will be—but, as a committee and as a Parliament, it is our duty to scrutinise any piece of legislation but particularly any sizeable piece of legislation. We must be clear in our minds about the financial memorandum that accompanies that legislation. I think that I can safely say that, irrespective of what we think about the bill, the committee has concerns because of a lot of the evidence that has been provided to us in the past three weeks.
That evidence says that what is before Parliament is not sufficient for the level of scrutiny that is required in order for us to decide whether the bill can progress in its current state or whether we need a completely different approach. Do you accept that the concern is sufficient, particularly among those who are trying to scrutinise the financial memorandum, to cause you to pause the bill until there is more detail?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Liz Smith
Minister, I have to say that it is the weakest financial memorandum that I have seen in all my time in the Parliament, and that includes the financial memorandums for various pieces of major legislation. What would you say in answer to those witnesses who have told us that, for some of the projected additional costs that the bill would give rise to, they have had to ask civil servants for further detail, because such detail has not been presented to them as they have sought to establish their projections from the financial memorandum?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Liz Smith
Minister, let me try this from another angle. You have persistently said that the bill is about people.