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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 3016 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
I am sure that we can draw on a lot of the work that was done in 2015. As I said at the start, if information can be pulled out and made public, I am happy to do that. We do not want to reinvent the wheel.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
That work is on-going and we will keep Parliament updated on it. Jennie Barugh can take it from there and talk about the appointment of the financial adviser, which is the next key stage, following which there will be a judgment on the value for money test and whether we will go forward with the proposal. That will depend on market conditions and what the financial outlook is.
10:45Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
Probably not. We wanted it to be fuller, but we could get only what we could get, and we finally decided that something was better than nothing. It was not a full review; it was the lowest common denominator—what we could agree on. It was not unhelpful, but it was limited.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
The £321 million is what I have set out—the 60 per cent. The figure that we have from the Treasury is just above that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
No other approaches emerged during that discussion.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
We always take cognisance of any views; we gathered a wide range of views as part of developing the strategy. As I said earlier, we look at behavioural impacts. Studies undertaken by HMRC have shown us that, to date, there is still net inward migration to Scotland, but that does not mean that we should be complacent. We must make sure that we keep monitoring any behavioural impact beyond anecdote.
You mentioned SFE. Financial services are an important part of the Scottish economy. I have heard some of the anecdotes that Craig Hoy has heard, but the success and growth of financial services in Scotland is continuing. Recent investment in Glasgow by major players in the financial services sector is a vote of confidence. They would not be investing if they did not think that they would be able to expand and recruit in Scotland.
There is a balance to be struck in ensuring that we set the right environment for business growth. A lot in the budget does that, but we should not be complacent and we will continue to monitor any behavioural change. We are working closely with HMRC to do that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
In England, only Whitehall departments and the directly employed public sector will get the funding. Of course, the UK Government has based its calculations on that, which is why our Barnett share will not cover our costs.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
There are two aspects to that, the first of which relates to the ministerial discussions that took place around the best option for reducing child poverty. There were various things that we could have done, such as increasing the Scottish child payment or using other methods, but we landed on the two-child cap mitigation on the basis of the evidence that third-party organisations had provided that that was the thing that we could do that would have a major impact. There is no scorecard available that compares that option with increasing the Scottish child payment.
The second aspect relates to the options for taking forward the mitigation of the two-child cap. Social Security Scotland is working on options for how to best do that and is working with the Department for Work and Pensions, because there are various options for delivery. Those options are being looked at and will be appraised, and the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice will update the committee and Parliament at the point at which the best option is selected—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
We will address that through the workforce plans to reduce the number of directly employed staff in the civil service, but we will do that in a managed and careful way.
The fact that we have a larger public sector with better paid workers is because of an investment that we have made over a number of years. The fact that nurses are better paid in Scotland helps with the recruitment of nurses. Recruiting nurses is really difficult, and paying them less is unlikely to help with recruitment, so we think that those are good investments.
Wales has a larger public sector as well. My simple point about employer national insurance contributions is: should devolved nations be punished or lose out on funding for that because we have invested in public sector services and staff over the years? I do not think that that is a fair proposition, and I do not think that the Welsh think it is, either. That is why we proposed that the actual costs should be covered rather than our just getting a Whitehall Barnett share. We have made our position very clear on that, and we have got to the position that we have got to. The discussion and debate will continue, not least this afternoon.
We believe that investing in our public services has also avoided some of the costly industrial disputes that we have seen south of the border, which have a cost to the public purse as well. These things are choices, and the choices that we have made are the choices that we have made.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
You are right to say that the Government always balances its books. That happens on a year-to-year basis, so we have to manage the pressures. There is a whole debate about the constraints on borrowing powers—we are pushing for, and want, more flexibility around the fiscal framework, beyond what we have secured, in order that we are able to manage the headwinds that would come at any Government.
The medium-term strategy gives us an opportunity to consider the fiscal outlook. Given that the UK Government will set out the fiscal outlook in June, the Office for Budget Responsibility will be able to draw from the information that it has put in the public domain, which will set the fiscal outlook for the Scottish Government on the medium-term horizon.
On the spend side, as we have talked about many times at the committee, that will require us to ensure that there is headroom for commitments, whether they are on social security or any other spending. The sustainability delivery plan, which I have said will be published alongside the MTFS, will go a bit further than the outlook in the MTFS and will bring together in one place all the pillars of work across Government, including on the workforce, social security, growing the economy and so on. Public sector reform is another key pillar. That will enable the Parliament and the committee to see how all that work will impact on the ability, over the longer term, to ensure that we have sustainable finances and that we can afford the priorities that the Government has set out, of which social security is a key one.
I hope that, from that, the committee and Parliament will be able to see that we will be making absolutely sure that we can sustain the expenditure going forward.