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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 3368 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I am not hearing an overwhelming endorsement from people around this—I was going to say round table; it is more of a horseshoe, to be honest. Everyone is all bunched together.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, I think that there is an element of that. There was a lot of politics in that. I suppose that the Scottish Government felt under a duty to follow the recommendations of the Smith commission and to look at them in detail. It has done that, but how long can you flog a dead horse? That is probably the issue here. There is no enthusiasm certainly for assignment anyway. I do not think that there are many people who are shouting from the rooftops for devolution of VAT either at the present time, unless I am mistaken. No. Does anyone else want to comment on this? It is a nice, cheery session, isn’t it?
It has been a very constructive session because, as has just been said, we have had eight years talking about this and if we, as a finance committee, with the unanimous support of our witnesses and across the political parties, are saying that assignment should no longer be looked at, that is a very strong message that we are sending to the Scottish Government on this.
Unless anyone has any further points that they want to make, I will wind up this quite short round-table session. I had expected it to go on a wee bit longer but, because of the unanimity of views that have been expressed through very detailed and high-quality submissions, I think that we have come to a very strong and unanimous conclusion. Does anyone else have anything to say? Going once—okay.
Thank you very much to everyone for attending and participating in today’s discussion. It has been very useful.
That concludes the public part of our meeting. We will continue to take evidence on the fiscal framework, and we will certainly convey our views to the Scottish Government regarding VAT assignment. We have the Deputy First Minister in next week and no doubt we will put these issues directly to her.
The next item on our agenda, which is a discussion of our work programme, will be taken in private. We will have a wee five-minute break to enable our witnesses and the official report to depart. Thank you.
11:52 Meeting continued in private until 12:27.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
That is an issue that Mark Taylor is specifically concerned about as well.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
At least it was in our favour. [Laughter.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
If you do not have them at your fingertips, you can get back to us.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Okay. I absolutely agree with that, and I am sure that colleagues will feel that that would be helpful. Thank you for the evidence that you have given.
We move to agenda item 3, which is formal consideration of the motion on the instrument. I invite the minister to speak to and move motion S6M-10683.
Motion moved,
That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Budget (Scotland) Act 2023 Amendment Regulations 2023 [draft] be approved.—[Tom Arthur]
Motion agreed to.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much for that very helpful opening statement. I have already scribbled down a huge number of notes from the comments that you made. It would, of course, help if I could read my writing; that might make life a little bit easier.
I will start by referring to some of the evidence that we received a couple of weeks ago—obviously, you will be familiar with that. We took evidence from the local authorities of Dundee, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian. It is fair to say that they are not so enamoured with the direction of travel, but they are definitely on board with the policy.
Obviously, the committee is concerned about finance and how things will be funded. Dundee City Council, which was the first to give evidence, said that there is “insufficient financial detail” and that
“the £70 million is not sufficient for all of Scotland.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 24 October 2023; c 1.]
It said that the finances that are being made available do not take into account the real cost of running the infrastructure facilities, that additional facilities and resources will be required to manage the facilities, and that that has not been taken into account. It went on to say that, in its view, the costs are underestimated to the tune of about 50 per cent—that is, the £70 million should be more like £140 million. How do you respond to those concerns?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
It is to ensure that Scotland does not lose any money in its expenditure overall: is that correct?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Of course, local authorities want to be able to plan ahead. Just last week, we produced a report on the importance of forward planning. In their evidence to us, which you will be aware of, local authorities said that they do not feel that they can do that if they do not have a commitment that the resources that they require will be made available.
Kirsty McGuire of South Lanarkshire Council said:
“Co-design is where we want to be.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 24 October 2023; c 9.]
The resources to be able to deliver that have to be available, but she and the others who gave evidence said, “I’m sorry, but the money just isn’t going to be there to deliver this.”
Let us consider enforcement officers, for example. The costs in the financial memorandum for enforcement are only about half of what the witnesses suggested the real costs would be, and the suggestion in the financial memorandum that 100 per cent of the littering fines would be collected bears no resemblance to the 10 to 15 per cent that the witnesses thought would be collected, based on their experience. Indeed, local authorities get nothing back from fiscal fines.
How do you address the cogent points that our witnesses made two weeks ago about some of those issues?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Okay. I will move on a wee bit from that to the area of co-design. You have emphasised a number of times the importance of co-design. I have already pointed out that local government is keen on the co-design element, but there are still one or two issues in relation to that. For example, Charlie Devine of Dundee City Council said:
“I think that co-design at this level would be really difficult and it would probably lengthen the process considerably … The co-design thing can be as big and complicated as you want to make it.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 24 October 2023; c 28.]
There is a real fear that we will still be discussing the secondary legislation on co-design many months into the future.
Kirsty McGuire of South Lanarkshire Council said:
“It is pretty difficult to attribute costs when you do not have the full picture. We do not know what the secondary legislation will look like, what form the other legislation will take or what form the EPR scheme will take.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 24 October 2023; c 27.]
Even with co-design, there are considerable concerns that we could be going down a rabbit hole with no clear ending. When will the co-design process be concluded? When would you like to conclude that in order that we can get some of the positive aspects of what the bill is intended to achieve up and running at the earliest possible opportunity?
