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 4316 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
We are well over time, so Michael Marra’s supplementary will have to be extremely brief.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
For our next evidence-taking session on the Scottish budget 2026-27, I welcome to the meeting Professor Mairi Spowage, professor of practice and director, Fraser of Allander Institute, University of Strathclyde; Professor David Heald, emeritus professor, Adam Smith business school, University of Glasgow; and Professor David Bell, professor of economics, University of Stirling. Good morning to you all, and apologies for keeping you waiting—the previous session overran. I also thank you for your helpful written submissions.
We will move straight to questions, the first of which will be to Professor Heald, although the other witnesses can respond, too. Professor Heald, you say in your submission:
“The Westminster Parliament does not take ex-ante scrutiny of public expenditure seriously, unlike the devolved legislatures. The disruption caused to the budgetary procedures of the devolved legislatures clearly does not rank highly in the timing decisions of UK Governments.”
Can you expand on what the actual impact of that is?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
You go on to say:
“The limited attention … to the detailed choices in the Scottish Budget 2026-27 is motivated by the urgency of securing Parliamentary approval in order to limit disruption to public service delivery.”
Would I be right in saying that what you are saying there is that, because the UK budget comes so late, the Scottish budget process has to be truncated and the priority is really just to get a budget through?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
One of the things that Labour did way back when—in 1997—was to stick with Conservative budgetary decisions for two years, which, whether or not you agreed with those decisions, actually allowed for some stability. Are you suggesting that, if this budget goes through, a new Government should stick to those decisions, at least in the first year, and then it can perhaps develop its own proposals?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
One of the difficulties for this committee is that, in 27 years of devolution, we have never had a Chancellor of the Exchequer give evidence to this committee or any of its predecessors, despite numerous invitations. It has also been extremely difficult—we have certainly not managed it in this term—to get a Chief Secretary to the Treasury in front of the committee, although we have done so in previous terms with previous Governments. It is a real difficulty that we cannot talk to them directly, despite the fact that the UK Government provides through the block grant somewhere in the region of 60 per cent of our overall expenditure in this Parliament.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
In relation to your Ruud Gullit anecdote, I remember that, in the 1980s, John DeLorean famously asked the UK Government for a billion to support his factory in Northern Ireland. He meant $1 billion, but the UK Government gave him £1 billion, so he was well chuffed.
As we know, Governments of all colours—Conservative Governments, Labour Governments and Scottish National Party Governments—have implemented fiscal drag. The reality is that all Governments try to raise as much money as possible while causing the least political damage to themselves.
I will ask this question to Professor Heald, but I will ask the other witnesses a similar question. You have been very concerned about the UK tax system, because it is not progressive in the sense that it does not look like a straight line—the line goes up and down like the skyline in New York. If you became Scotland’s president for life in a devolved context, how would you make the current system more progressive, taking into account that Scotland would not be an independent country and would have to work with the UK system?
Clearly, it would not be perfect, but how could we do that while gathering much the same amount of revenue? Where would the splits be? You spoke about 21 per cent and 42 per cent. How would you do that? It might take five years, but how would it be done?
11:45
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
What would you do?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
My understanding is that, since 22 July, people cannot come in on social care visas.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
Arran is in my constituency, and Montrose house is short of 15 staff, which is 30 per cent of the total. It has had to close five beds, which is causing real concern on the island.
Professor Heald, do you want to comment on anything related to capital?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Kenneth Gibson
I would use a railways analogy to describe Scotland’s different tax systems and how they relate to the UK. When a train does not arrive, people always blame ScotRail, but two thirds of the time it is because of Network Rail.
Anyway, just to wind up, we have not covered a lot of areas, but time is against us. I just wonder whether our guests wish to comment on anything salient that we have not touched on.
