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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 836 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
What size is the public sector in Wales, for example?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
As you suggest, it is a question of priorities and what the Government chooses to do. I am not necessarily commenting on that, but there are options.
Do you feel that there is a slight contradiction there? The Scottish Government says that it has no choice but to remove the payment, at the same time as it announces policies on council tax freezes, for example, at political conferences. Those choices exist—it is about what the Government decides in making them.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Finally, as John Mason highlighted, there is the ScotWind money. We might hear in the next few days whether that is going to be used, but it is, nonetheless, available to plug some of the gaps.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
When you say “national”, do you mean “reserved”, in effect?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
So, would that be about deferring the block grant adjustment?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
The Scottish Government—both in correspondence with us and publicly—has said that, in relation to the winter fuel payments, the decision of the UK Government has meant that the Scottish Government has no choice but to replicate the UK Government’s position. That is not true, though, is it? There are choices and options. What are they?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
So, the money would still have to come out but, in theory, the Scottish Government could deliver the winter fuel payment as it currently is to the people whom it currently goes to—or would have gone to—but there would have to be reconciliation in two years, or within the two years.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
On the spending commitment, I think that the position is that the Scottish Government cannot overspend its budget, but can overcommit its budget, to some extent. There are a number of areas that we can look at—social security is one of them. You said that the gap between income from the block grant and spending is, essentially, baked in. That could lead to serious issues, especially if the gap continues to grow. Even its just continuing to sit at the current level could have serious implications for budgets in the future because, as you said, that will be baked in—every single year we will have to find that additional money.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 June 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
I know that you do not want to write the commissioner’s role or their responsibilities for them or, certainly, do the recruitment, but what background would you expect the commissioner to have?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 June 2024
Jamie Halcro Johnston
I get your earlier point about taking a more holistic approach, but a lot of very good third sector organisations that are obviously specialists in their areas are already working together, as we have said, and they will be far better resourced to do that work than this role will be. We are talking about a disability commissioner with only four staff, whose roles are still to be determined; I imagine that there will be a communications person in there to get messages out, as well as an office administrator, but that starts to reduce the number of people doing direct advocacy and investigation. How will they be able to deliver more than far better resourced third sector organisations?
