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 1784 contributions
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
Before I come on to that, I put on record that we will publish further research on the impacts of income tax policy on businesses and competitiveness in Scotland in this year.
The larger public sector with better paid workers means that we have more nurses, teachers and police officers. I think that it is a good thing that we have more front-line staff who are able to treat us, keep us well and keep us safe, and that—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
I think that the evidence was from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and other organisations. In the discussions that ministers had with those child poverty organisations, they kept coming back to the point that mitigating the two-child cap was the main thing that could be done. Since then, further evidence has been provided—by, I think, the Fraser of Allander Institute—that we might, in fact, have underestimated the number of children who would be lifted out of poverty through the work on the two-child cap.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
I commit to our doing so, and I am sure that the Minister for Parliamentary Business will assist us in that process.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
I am sure.
Before this goes out of my head, an opportunity exists with digital and artificial intelligence that can transform the way in which services are delivered. In 10 years, things will probably be unrecognisable from how they are now. The question is, what do we do with the workforce whose roles have perhaps been made redundant? One of the opportunities that the public sector needs to consider is upskilling that workforce for other roles that are still required. That might not be the full story, but it is one opportunity. There are good examples of that having happened.
There are also good examples of cost avoidance. I think that it was the National Records of Scotland—no, it was the Scottish Public Pensions Agency—that used digital to avoid recruitment. It assumed that we would have to recruit a large contingent workforce at huge cost in order to do a fix on pension payments; instead of doing that, it found a digital solution. That is exactly what we need to look at. Recruitment should not be a default in order to fix a problem or deal with the build of something.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Shona Robison
I think that that is achievable, but not without a cost, because that money could otherwise have gone to pay negotiations or front-line services. Whether it is recruiting more people or doing things differently on the front line, everything has a cost, and that has to be acknowledged first and foremost.
At stage 1 of the budget, we had a choice. Instead of putting money out to portfolios, I could have held it back. However, it is the same money, so, regardless of whether I had held it back or it had gone out to portfolios, there was not a magic bit of money. I decided to give it to portfolios to give them some resilience in the knowledge that we might end up in a place that was far from optimal with regard to employer national insurance contributions. It will not be easy, but, with support from my officials, working with Richard McCallum and his team, portfolios will be supported to manage supporting the cost of 40 per cent of ENICs liabilities.
It will be for local government to manage that, and the 32 local authorities will have their own responses as they set their budgets over the coming weeks.