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 3226 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thanks. That is very clear.
There are no further questions from members. Is there anything else that you wish to say that you feel that we have not touched upon? Is there anything that you would like to clarify or point out to the committee?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I will ask a final question on zero-based budgeting. Professor Bell, who will be giving evidence very soon, said in his submission:
“The UK Spending Review is a comprehensive ‘zero-based’ review that is forcing departments to justify the entirety of their spending, rather than the increment requested relative to last year’s baseline. It will involve ‘challenge panels’ including experts from the private sector and academia who will scrutinize departmental spending plans.”
What are the implications of that for the OBR?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you. I am pleased that you have touched on the OBR’s review and that the Treasury has accepted the 10 recommendations. I was going to ask you about that, but you have covered a lot of what I was going to ask, so I will ask one final question before I open up the session to colleagues.
In your submission, you state:
“The OBR’s remit includes the responsibility to evaluate the long-term sustainability of the UK public finances and assess fiscal risks.”
The SFC has published a fiscal sustainability report, which the committee will be interrogating—or at least questioning—and taking evidence on next Tuesday. What kind of work have you been doing with the SFC in relation to its report and your own work?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You have pointed out that you are, of course, not responsible for the formal calculation of the block grant adjustments, which are produced by the UK Treasury. Let me phrase it in this way: would it be helpful if the OBR actually did that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I always think that, for long-term projects—city region deals being an obvious example of projects with a long development period—a spending review never happens next week, next month or even next year. It always seems to be kicked down the road—there is always that worry as well.
I will open up the session to questions. Michael Marra will start, to be followed by Liz Smith.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
When we discussed that issue during budget deliberations, we said that, because of in-grade rises, promotions and so on, 3 per cent really looked like being more like 4.5 per cent, but that is not being budgeted for.
I am jumping about a bit, because I do not want to take up too much time, given that other colleagues will want to come in. However, I want to cover a number of bases that others will want to touch on. I am not going to mention AI—David Bell’s report is laced with it—because I know that a certain individual will probably want to come in on that.
Professor Spowage, you talked about the MTFS earlier and you said that it appears to have
“the trappings of a strategic document but lacks a lot of detail that would be required for it to be a useful set of forecasts. There is no detail on how the spending projections are arrived at, and therefore it is impossible to scrutinise the priority of each and how realistic they are.”
You have also said that it has largely been “abandoned”.
Added to that, you talked about the fiscal sustainability delivery plan, and you said:
“It’s unclear why a different document is needed.”
I do not think you are the only person to have said that. The SFC has said something similar. Why do you think it has produced a separate document?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You say that the addition of the medium-term financial strategy to the budget process
“has been a positive development, setting out five-year forecasts”,
and you go on to say that
“this should encourage budget planning over multiple years rather than focusing on balancing the budget one year ahead.”
Can you talk to us about that, too?
09:45Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That is an important point. Your submission also says:
“We currently do not have a role forecasting spending, other than social security payments”.
You are obviously keen to have that additional role.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I hear a sense of frustration, though, that, although you are examining that aspect, you are not able to deliver the same handle on its impact on the rest of the Scottish budget. I sympathise with you on that. You say:
“The Scottish Government has also set out scenarios for spending and funding to assess the risks faced by the Scottish Budget in future years. The Scottish Fiscal Commission does not currently have any role in assessing these scenarios and risks.”
Again, would you be keen to have such a role?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Exactly. In the autumn revisions, in particular, we have a groundhog day scenario with some of those transfers. I have said that to ministers, as you probably know. Thank you for emphasising that.
You said that the evaluation of the forecast in 2024, which was accompanied by a fiscal update, was
“judged to be a useful snapshot as the Scottish Parliament began its annual process of Budget scrutiny so we plan to publish the Fiscal Update again in August 2025.”
Can you touch on how useful that was?
