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 1714 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Michael Marra
That applies to both Governments.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Michael Marra
I know that, in the past, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has been very keen on the parental employability support fund, but the social security secretary has said:
“I am afraid that the ... fund has just run its course as a concept.”—[Official Report, Social Justice and Social Security Committee, 14 September 2023; c 14.]
Do you have any reflections on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Michael Marra
We have highlighted the cut to capital spending that is made in the budget—it is a cut of some £400 million. [Interruption.] The exact figure is £484 million—thank you for that, convener. The First Minister was talking about spending four times that amount. Is it realistic to say that, if we put that money back and added three times that amount, we could produce double-digit growth rates in Scotland? Is that realistic, Dr Sousa? If that would be possible, that is something that the committee might want to recommend. Could we find that money and achieve 10 per cent growth in Scotland?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Michael Marra
Chris Birt, do you have any thoughts on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Michael Marra
The committee has encountered challenges in finding any strategic approach to public sector reform. Keir Greenaway is right. It is clear that what you talked about is happening everywhere. Every organisation is having to react rather than taking a strategic approach.
We took evidence from the permanent secretary, who said that he did not understand, or was not aware of, the current Government’s approach to public sector reform. The resource spending review was dropped, but it seems to be back on the table. Do the witnesses—Audit Scotland and Martin Booth in particular—have clarity about where the approach is headed, given what they have heard from the Deputy First Minister?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Michael Marra
On that point—I am also reflecting on what we heard in the previous evidence session—we have long-term targets around reducing child poverty, climate change et cetera, but it feels like the budget is much more short term and that it does not consider the long-term priorities that the Government has set out, or how we will reach the targets. The implementation gap has been much commented on. It would be interesting to hear colleagues’ comments and views on the rhetoric and political language and whether they see the priorities reflected in what comes forward.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Economic and Fiscal Forecasts
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Michael Marra
Okay. Thank you.
I have a couple of other small issues to raise. We will move on, if that is okay. We are looking at fairly large increases in the social security spend, which you have already set out. Can you talk about the relative amount of the uplift that is the result of behaviour changes and policy in Scotland? There has been a lot of talk about a kinder and more generous policy. How much of that is based on assumptions about the intent of the policy, and how much of it is based on experience? Has Social Security Scotland provided you with figures? Are you basing what you say on modelling the increase or just on your broad assumptions about the policy intent?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Economic and Fiscal Forecasts
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Michael Marra
Okay. Thank you.
I am not sure that I got a specific answer to my question about whether there is anything else in the agreement with Government that it agreed to provide but did not provide by the deadline.
13:00Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Michael Marra
The report says that you want to make sure that the work is “clear and accessible”. I wonder about its being replicable. In the run-up to the budget, we had a couple of external reports that tried to cost different taxation policies and used markedly different methodologies other than the key methodology, which is yours. To what extent is that a black box that people cannot see into? How much do you engage with external organisations to show your working so that they can plug their numbers into your formula and we can have a more consistent view of some of the issues around behaviour effects?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Economic and Fiscal Forecasts
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Michael Marra
I will stick with the issue of the public sector workforce. I am interested in how Government policy informs what you have done and the numbers that you have produced. The resource spending review, which was a major piece of work back in May 2022, said that the Government would aim to return the total size of the devolved public sector workforce to around pre-Covid levels by 2026-27.
We were promised that there would be more detail about that in last year’s budget, but John Swinney did not provide that and said that it was up to public bodies to do so. On 16 May, I asked the permanent secretary about the status of that policy, but he said:
“I do not think that that has been publicly stated”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 16 May 2023; c 36.]
He did not know what the status of that was. On 13 June, Shona Robison told this committee that it was
“A bit of a blunt tool”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 13 June 2023; c 27.]
and said that she was abandoning RSR, but, in recent days, we have heard much more language about a big decrease in the public sector workforce. What is your understanding of Scottish Government policy and how has it informed your predictions and assumptions?
