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 3259 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
There has been a £484 million cut in capital. Where should that cut fall?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
I think that people do want that, but the issue is whether, if the tax threshold is increased to a certain degree, it ends up bringing in less than it would have done if it was not increased because of the behavioural changes that people would make. SPICe, the Fraser of Allander Institute and the Scottish Fiscal Commission have all said that the £125,140 rate would bring in less than 15 per cent of the money that, on paper, it should bring in because people will say that they will not work an extra day this week because it will all go on tax anyway.
I am asking whether the STUC and GMB are looking at that particular issue. It is not a zero-sum game. It is not a situation whereby increasing tax by 5 per cent means that we get that extra money, because it will be lost through behavioural change. Will the STUC and GMB go back and look at that and say that, if we pitch it too high, we will end up getting less and there will be lower productivity, sluggish economic growth and we will not have the money for public services? What are your views on that behavioural issue?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
There are different prioritisations.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
I asked Keir Greenaway about additional taxation or additional grant from the UK. The UK grant situation is obviously important. The UK Government has cut our capital budget by £484 million, which will have a huge impact. In the previous evidence session, we talked about, for example, the impact on housing, which is facing a 30 per cent cut in the year ahead. Does the GMB not feel that the UK Government should have increased the grant to Scotland this year?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
Should the grant—for example, the resource grant that the UK Government awards Scotland through the block grant—have been increased more?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
The investment in critical safety and maintenance for road infrastructure is going up by 40 per cent next year to £524.7 million, and college capital is going up from £340.7 million to £356.9 million, which is a 4.5 per cent increase. In both those areas, capital is actually increasing.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
Indeed. However, the point that I am trying to make is that, as Ross Greer said in the previous evidence session, a lot of the capital funding is going on critical safety and maintenance. The amount for road improvements is quite low—it is only £124 million. The issue is that the trunk road network maintenance and safety aspect is taking up the bulk of the capital, which is why local government is not getting the capital that it requires to do the pavements and side streets, which are also extremely important for people.
Does anyone else want to make any points?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, well—newspapers are another story.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
That is a matter for bartering, discussion and debate among the political parties. At this time of year, representatives of each of the political parties will speak to the Deputy First Minister to see whether they can shift the dial on the budget in one direction or another. There will not be any more money from anywhere, unlike in the good old days of Derek Mackay’s sofa. It is a question of moving the money from one page of the budget to another page. If colleges make a really good argument, it will no doubt be to the detriment of somebody else. That is the way it works when you have a budget that is, in effect, shrinking.
The theory is that they use what is called the GDP deflator, which means that inflation is set at 1.7 per cent in the budget. We all know that inflation is not 1.7 per cent, but that is how it is measured, because the UK Treasury GDP deflator is used. A 2.6 per cent increase in resource is probably a reduction in the real world, because more than half of the money that is spent here goes on salaries and wages and nobody is getting 2.6 per cent.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 9 January 2024
Kenneth Gibson
Figures for local government show that the general capital grant is falling from £607.6 million to £476.9 million, which is about a 19 per cent reduction.
