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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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Who do you want to answer that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
You will get your minute after this, by the way.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Before I let Ruth Boyle in, Jamie Halcro Johnston and Ross Greer are keen to come in.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I echo that on that specific area, because I have raised that point myself.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Good morning, and welcome to the 23rd meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We have one public item on the agenda, which is to take evidence on the sustainability of Scotland’s finances from two panels of witnesses as part of our pre-budget scrutiny this year. I welcome the first panel: João Sousa, deputy director of the Fraser of Allander Institute; Professor David Heald, emeritus professor and honorary senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow’s Adam Smith business school; and Professor David Bell, professor of economics at the University of Stirling.
I intend to allow up to 75 minutes for the session. If you want to be brought into the discussion to respond to a question that has been directed to a specific witness, please indicate to the clerks and I can bring you in.
We have the witnesses’ excellent submissions, so we will go straight to questions. João Sousa, in your submission, you say:
“The Medium-Term Financial Strategy ... highlighted a large funding gap, of £1 billion in 2024-25 and close to £2 billion by 2027-28. The 2024-25 and future budgets will need to include realistic assumptions on spending commitments given the available level of funding and be clear about prioritisation decisions, as well as realistic policy on tax.”
What do you consider to be “realistic assumptions”?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
That is the UK scenario whereby someone on £51,000 a year loses child benefit, but two people who earn £49,000 a year continue to get it.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
The reason why I am labouring the point a wee bit—that said, I have asked only two or three questions so far, but the answers have been excellent and very interesting, and they lead to many other questions—is that there is so much pressure on the Scottish Government to increase taxation. Later, we will speak to the Poverty Alliance, which is a coalition of many organisations, all of which have talked about increasing benefits, introducing wealth taxes and putting up the higher and upper rates of tax. What would the impact of that be on behavioural change and on economic growth?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Phil, can you answer Michael Marra’s specific question? He was concerned about how an increase in taxes was going to enable us to—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Professor Bell, you have been very patient, and I know that João Sousa wants to come back in. I also want to be able to give my colleagues an opportunity to ask questions. However, I am a bit miffed that I have asked only three or four of the 25 questions that I had written down to ask.
In your submission, Professor Bell, you mention the following:
“the outlook remains difficult, with funding for day-to-day non-benefit spending set to be almost 2% lower in 2027-28 than in 2022-23. This is despite forecasts for a significant increase in net revenues from Scotland’s devolved income tax revenues over the next few years: if this did not materialise, the reduction could be closer to 5% over the same period.”
Will you talk about that? We have already talked about tax, but how do you feel the Scottish Government could adjust its taxation policies to be more “strategic”, as Professor Heald put it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
That loss aversion makes Governments nervous about making radical change.
