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 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.
Displaying 2867 contributions
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
John Mason
How should we change the system? Should it become more like general practice? There is virtually no private GP work鈥攊t is all in the NHS.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
John Mason
Okay. We will not go there. [Laughter.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
John Mason
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
John Mason
Thank you, cabinet secretary. You have covered quite a lot of ground, but the committee has a lot of ground to cover, too. Each member will have about 15 minutes for questions and answers.
I will start. You mentioned the key figure of next year鈥檚 budget and the potential negative income tax reconciliation, which was, I think, 拢712 million鈥攁ctually, I think that the figure for negative tax reconciliation is 拢687 million in total. Can you explain a little more your thinking as to how you will deal with that? Can some of the money be borrowed? Where will the rest come from? We will direct our questions to you, cabinet secretary, and it will be up to you to bring in your officials.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
John Mason
We accept that we cannot have a running commentary, but both our committees and the committees at Westminster need to do a certain amount of scrutinising. Can you give us any idea of timescales? I believe that the initial report has been completed, but not published, and then there is meant to be a review. Do the negotiations come after that?
09:45Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
John Mason
Can you say anything about the issues that will be involved? Clearly, borrowing has been mentioned, and capital borrowing is another issue to address. There are other issues in the background that have not been dealt with, such as air departure tax and VAT. Do you expect those to be part of the negotiations?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
John Mason
Good morning, and welcome to the 18th meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.
Our first agenda item is an evidence-taking session with Shona Robison, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, on the Scottish Government鈥檚 medium-term financial strategy, the Scottish Fiscal Commission鈥檚 economic and fiscal forecasts from May 2023 and her priorities under the First Minister鈥檚 policy prospectus. Ms Robison is joined by Scottish Government officials Kathy Johnston, deputy director in the office of the chief economic adviser; Alison Cumming, director of budget and public spending; and Andrew Scott, director of tax and revenues. I welcome you all to the meeting.
I invite Ms Robison to make a short opening statement.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
John Mason
That raises a range of different issues, which colleagues will come in on when they get their turn.
You have mentioned the fiscal framework review. Can you give us any idea of the timescale for that? Is there any chance that anything can be done for the 2024-25 budget, which looks like it will be pretty crucial? Is it even possible to separate out some of the longer-term issues? Obviously, getting the borrowing limit and some of the figures in that respect changed will be quite urgent. As we have discussed at committee and with the Fiscal Commission, given inflation and the increase in Scottish Government powers, the 拢300 million figure is really out of date, is it not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
John Mason
Douglas Lumsden is next.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
John Mason
That is great. Thanks.
One of the points that has come up from a few questioners is the uncertainty of the timing of the UK Government鈥檚 budget setting. That issue has come to the committee quite a lot. Although it is a request rather than a question, can you press the UK Government? I know that you cannot dictate to it.