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 1428 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
I am always up for discussion about how further progress can be made and am keen to engage further on the detail of some of the areas that you have raised.
The only point that I would make about in-year transfers is one that I have made before. Policy direction quite often sits in one area while delivery sits in another so that, say, a policy could be set by education but delivered by local government. That is one example—there are many others. There is then a tension between the policy and its delivery. If all the money is transferred at the start, where does that leave policy decisions in that area of Government?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
The aim of the fiscal sustainability delivery plan is to bring all the component parts across Government into one place, where we will set out actions and the pillars of the plan so that the Parliament, the committee and external stakeholders can see it all and track its delivery. It is an attempt to make that information more transparent and accessible. I will be able to set out our suggested review processes. The plan will, clearly, be linked to the MTFS but it will focus on the how and the what, and we will be able to put some timeframes against the delivery of the actions that we need to take.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
We will keep you informed of any substantial developments.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
The Acorn project is a good example of that. We have offered to increase funding in order to push the UK Government down the road of approval of Acorn, and it remains to be seen whether that happens at the spending review. There is an inefficiency in not aligning the investments, strategies and leverage that we have as Governments. We should be trying to face those in a similar direction.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
Exactly.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
The tax advisory group—we were really clear about this with the members of the group and in our public communications—was not set up in such a way that we would say to it, “This is our tax policy for the budget.” Apart from anything else, if I were to do that before informing the Parliament, I would get myself into difficulty. The tax advisory group was not a group that we would, in essence, consult on the tax rates for each budget, and that was made very clear with the group at the start.
We work with the tax advisory group on things such as the public’s understanding of tax and areas that we could improve in that regard and on ensuring that we look at all the component parts in the here and now and the areas that we might look at in the future. In essence, that is my response. I would not have been telling the tax advisory group about our proposals for tax. That would not be right, because the Parliament should hear about those first and foremost.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
We take advice from the Scottish Fiscal Commission. We give the commission the information and details of what we have been looking at. We give it various options, and it comes back with what they would mean in terms of revenue raised or potential behaviour change. We will also look at data from HM Revenue and Customs. We look at all those things, but the Fiscal Commission is the main body that will have done analysis in advance of our making decisions.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
Angus Robertson replied to you on this matter just last week, Mr Marra. He said:
“The Scottish Government stands ready to engage at any point with the United Kingdom Government on substantial new fiscal powers for Scotland, following which we will model the impact of potential policy choices.”—[Official Report, 14 May 2025; c 9.]
We are ready to engage with the UK Government in looking at full fiscal autonomy if it is open to engaging with us on the detailed work for that. We have asked for a proper review of the fiscal framework—one that goes beyond just the margins—and we have asked the Treasury to do a more fundamental review of the fiscal framework. We have not yet had any indication that the UK Government would be up for a more general and wider review, but we will continue to pursue that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
We would have to do the detailed work at a point in time. It would clearly depend on the financial circumstances of that point in time—whether that was now, five years ago or 10 years ago. We would have to do detailed work with the UK Government and, if it was serious about wanting to engage with us, it would—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Shona Robison
No detailed work has been undertaken on the basis of where we are at the moment and the current fiscal position. If we reached an agreement that such work should be undertaken, it would be done with the UK Government.
