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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 1523 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Environmental Fiscal Measures
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
You have done a great job with your report, Callum Blackburn, particularly in restricting it to only 90 pages, such is the complexity of the issue. There is a backdrop to it, of course. The UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee’s report makes it clear that the UK Government has a plan, without answering the key question of how it will fund the transition to net zero, including how it will deliver policy on replacing income from taxes such as fuel duty. It does not even provide a general direction of travel on levies and taxation, which would kind of nail it.
Few could disagree with the principles that you set out in your report, but it immediately struck me that there must be areas in which, if you adhere to one principle, you will be moving against another. Are there any particular areas that you would want to bring out that have not been brought out thus far? You have given some examples already, but it would be useful to have more examples, because I would not in any way want to underestimate the complexity of what we have to do.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Environmental Fiscal Measures
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Like everyone else, I could ask a multitude of questions, but we would be here all day.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Environmental Fiscal Measures
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
For the record, I point out that the Scottish Government is recommending refusal of the LCM.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Environmental Fiscal Measures
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Okay. As I have been invited to do so, I will.
You allude to some of the potential limitations introduced by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and the Subsidy Control Bill. The Scottish Parliament has refused to pass a legislative consent motion on that bill, and the Economy and Fair Work Committee, of which I am also a member, has written about it in quite stringent terms. Are there any other areas that you want to highlight in that respect? I suppose that there is a timing element to consider, given that, as you have pointed out, initiatives that the Scottish Government might attempt to introduce—and which might be trying to do the right things for the right reasons within a very restricted framework—could fall foul of that bill. You have provided some commentary in your report, but you have not chosen to give any specific examples. Are there any such examples that you would like to highlight now?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
I am trying to explain that, from an accountability perspective, money that the UK Government provides to councils has to be bid for. We have already agreed that that process is inefficient, as some public expenditure is lost through days of inefficiency. It is not the same as money being set aside, with assistance on how councils should spend it from the Scottish Government, because that is done on a universal basis. I am just trying to confirm that my understanding is correct.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Yes.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Yes. I accept your point, because until we have the data, we cannot start to make that assessment. I do not know whether Emma Congreve has anything to add in response to my two questions.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
Yes—I am trying to make that distinction. It is not like for like in quite the way that was set out.
I turn to my other question. I am interested in the point that you make at paragraph 13 of your submission. Can you give us a bit more flavour on disaggregating data in order to distinguish between employment activities that are in the public sector in Scotland but are not in the public sector in England? From the point of view of comparing apples with apples, that is very interesting, because the picture is quite opaque when we look at that per capita spend.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
For what it is worth, I think that it is very good to have that. It is a positive, and I wanted to get the understanding of it on the record, so I thank you for that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Michelle Thomson
I have quick question on something that has come up a number of times in a variety of these sessions about the budget process. I fully accept what you are saying—I think that most people would agree that it is somewhat inefficient. Do you collect any data about that? When I say “inefficient”, I mean these late changes at the 11th hour, where you think you that have spend, you allocate it and then you need to move it from budget pots or whatever—there is a whole variety of things.
Do you have any sense of the additional cost of doing that in terms of hours accrued, because that is a hard figure? You must be collecting days spread throughout all the departments that are working on it. Do you have any sense of that—apart from loss of hair?
