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 2881 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
John Mason
We have covered quite a lot of ground already, but I will just go over one or two points again. To take some figures as an example, if a second home buyer or somebody who intends to buy to let has a budget of, say, 拢104,000, at present that would be 拢100,000 for the property and 拢4,000 for tax. If we put the tax up to 6 per cent, that would mean that that person has only 拢98,000 to pay for the property and 拢6,000 for tax, roughly. Therefore, the house price comes down by 拢2,000 and competitors, such as first-time buyers, will be advantaged because they will have to beat a lower figure to get the property. It seems obvious to me that this will benefit first-time buyers. Is my logic roughly correct?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
John Mason
My example would be better with higher figures at which the tax would come into play but, because I live in a property that is valued at less than 拢100,000, I tend to think of figures in that direction.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
John Mason
The point remains that it is clearly an advantage for first-time buyers if their competitors basically have less money to compete with them.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
John Mason
I realise that you do not want to stray beyond your remit, but a lot of constituents who are in the private rented sector and definitely do not want to be in it come to me. They are there because it is the last resort for them. They cannot get an RSL house and they cannot afford to buy. Anything that moves the balance a little bit towards the first-time buyer and away from the private rented sector, even if it is only 2 per cent, has to be a good thing for my constituents.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
John Mason
As I understand it, you are looking for a 4.8 per cent cash increase this year. Some parts of the public sector have been given a flat-cash settlement. If the Parliament was to offer you a flat-cash settlement, what would that mean in practice?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
John Mason
I understand that and I am not really arguing with it, but other parts of the public sector are under the same pressures. We have discussed commissioners at some length. For clarity, who should take an overview of commissioners? Is it this committee? I accept your point that it is not the corporate body鈥檚 responsibility to say no, and I am sure that all the individual commissioners are doing and will do good work, but somebody needs to look at the overall picture and say that the money is not going into front-line services but into commissioners. Who should take that overall view?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
John Mason
I do not make many suggestions.
I will move on. Is the contingency increase from 拢1 million to 拢1.5 million simply cover in case inflation hits a particular area harder than we expect?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
John Mason
That was kind of you, convener.
Just to pursue the pay side of things, if my understanding is correct, an increase of 2 per cent was built into the budget for the current year. You indicated that we could cope if it went up to 5 per cent during the year, but once it went over that, cuts would have to be made to balance it out, and extra would have to be paid. What assumption on pay is built into next year鈥檚 budget?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
John Mason
To pursue something that Michelle Thomson raised, a practical point is that, if one or more of the pay disputes is not settled by 31 March 2023, that presumably means that there is money sitting in this year鈥檚 budget that could have been paid out but will not be paid out until next year. Will that go into the reserve?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
John Mason
I understand that, although I think that the Scottish social attitudes survey said that the public were open to higher taxes and redistribution. Also, the expert panel made the point that we are not very progressive on property taxes generally at the moment.
