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
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
I guess that that is recognition that, if there are fewer places for university students, that could pose a risk to those from less well-off backgrounds. It is therefore important that we maintain opportunities for access to university and the non-traditional routes that support students from less well-off backgrounds, in order to ensure that, through our policies, the risks that have been identified do not necessarily come to fruition.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
Part of the challenge of having a hybrid system and incomplete devolution of tax powers is that anomalies will exist. The Fraser of Allander Institute said that addressing the specific point that you have made would require significant changes to the basic and intermediate rates. The process around that, let alone the impact, will be brought into sharp focus if further tax changes are made in the spring budget, for example. Changes at that very advanced point in our budget process inevitably impact on the tax and spend decisions of the Scottish Parliament.
To say that it is not an ideal system is probably the understatement of the year. It is far from ideal. Among all that complexity, we have tried to carve out a more progressive system, but there are areas that rub up against the UK system in a way that is not ideal. There is no getting away from that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
Some errors always occur, which is regrettable. Discussions have taken place with Clyde Gateway over the Christmas and new year period to ensure that it understands the budgetary position. The volume of information and the changes that are inevitably made can sometimes lead to errors such as that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
We will, of course, continue to consider such things. The difficulty is that, if I was sitting here with £350 million unallocated in a certain fund, I imagine that there would, understandably, be calls for that money to be deployed in order to avoid some difficult decisions. Given our constraints and lack of fiscal levers, we are in a tight fiscal position. Our preference would, of course, be for that position to change, so that we could build capacity in a reserve or fund for infrastructure investment or particular projects in future years. However, I cannot guarantee that that will be the case, given the outlook that you have described. Whether it is the current UK Government continuing with its fiscal priorities or an alternative Government sticking to similar spending plans, as looks likely, that does not bode well for the Scottish budget being anything other than fiscally tight for some time to come. However, in principle, I do not disagree with what you have said.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
We always keep the position under review. Free tuition is important so that tuition fees are not a barrier to those entering into higher education. We talked earlier about those from a more deprived background going to university and the gap has closed—there are more students from more deprived communities going to university. That is partly due to the fact that we have free tuition and that people will not be taking on the levels of debt that are seen elsewhere in these islands. If you are asking me whether we are reviewing the position of free tuition, I would say no, that is not something that we are reviewing.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
It is not us putting additional money into student support, albeit that that would not be a bad thing to do. It is because of that AME.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
Given the current climate, it is challenging to disaggregate what the factors are.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Shona Robison
Not so far.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Independent Report and Review
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Shona Robison
That is because of the changes to resource borrowing. We can borrow up to £600 million, some of which can be regarded as baked into the normal fiscal framework.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Independent Report and Review
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Shona Robison
Well, again, it was a negotiation. We would have wanted that borrowing to go further than £600 million but, essentially, that was the landing space and a compromise—we got to where we got to and we had to make a judgment on whether to settle on £600 million. In light of my concerns about the negative tax reconciliation, you can see why progress on that was progress, as it were. We would have wanted to go further if we could have negotiated that.
