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 3407 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
It is helpful to an extent, because it helps us to focus. A number of people, including the economists who were here before, have talked about three-year or five-year funding. The Scottish Government is not funded beyond year to year, but there is still the question whether we should plan. I was on the Social Justice Committee during the 1999 to 2003 parliamentary session. We produced a detailed report on why we should do exactly what you have suggested and, 20-odd years later, we are still taking about it. It is a fundamental point, although you have not put pounds, shillings and pence on it.
Ruth, you have some statistical analysis in your report and you have produced some wonderful graphs. Talk us through, in a few short minutes, exactly what additional resources we should provide, Given all the caveats about wealth tax—that it cannot be implemented for the next financial year and so on, according to the economists—what can we do in the next year in order to deliver the agenda that you, the IPPR and others would like?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
The last person to comment will be Adam Stachura. Each of our guests will then have one minute to wind up and to mention anything that has not been covered so far.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Judith, you have a minute or so to wind up.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
There are a couple of points there. First, the suggestion not to lower the bus pass age from 65 to 60 came not from me but from Callum Chomczuk, who was then at Age Scotland, during the 2011 to 2016 parliamentary session. He said that the money saved should be spent on adaptations for older people. I thought that what Age Scotland had to say at that time was very brave. So many people come here—I am not mentioning any names or looking at anyone specifically—and say that we should spend more money on this, but they do not say how we can save money on that. We as a committee and the Scottish Government have to look at that. John Swinney then said that he was not going to reduce the bus pass age from 65 to 60 but would increase the disabled adaptations budget by 25 per cent. So, there was a big win there for Age Scotland.
You touched on people having to sell their homes, not just because of the wealth tax but to go into a residential care home. That affected my mother and many other people. I was speaking to a leading economist, who has a good relationship with this committee, and he said that two of his aunties said, “You know what? Rather than go into a care home and see the house getting sold, we will just go on a world cruise for the next couple of years and spend the money that way.” That was not a flippant remark; that is what they did. There are some people who, of course, are not able to save up and buy a house, and they do not have an asset to sell. People who feel that they have an asset that they might want to pass on, at least in part, to their children are unable to do so. There is a real issue about the fairness of that.
One of the things that people talk about is fairness. I do not know whether anyone wants to define it for me. Fairness for one person is, perhaps, fairness for another. Anyway, I am starting to wander off as well. The next person to comment will be Judith Turbyne, to be followed by Michael Kellet.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
It is a chicken-and-egg situation, is it not? If the economy does not grow and we are not able to attract inward investment because people feel that they will be taxed disproportionately highly, we will not have the money to provide those services. Scotland could become more of a backwater, with more young people leaving and the population stagnating and declining. We had the lowest population growth in the entire world in the 20th century. For example, two million people emigrated in the half century after world war one.
There are real issues to address in the whole package. It is about trying to get the optimum right, not the maximum or the minimum, so that we can achieve what most of us want to achieve.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Does that answer your question, Michael?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I was going to ask you about capital expenditure. I do not like to interrupt you in free flow, but I also asked about behavioural change. For example, what would the impact on people be if the Scottish Government decided that, because, politically, it would be very difficult to cut spending or whatever, it would have to hit the 1 or 2 per cent of the highest taxpayers? You talked about people who are just over the threshold of the higher marginal rate. What impact would it have on them?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Will that be impacted by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I think that it will be a theme that everyone will talk about areas that we could spend more money in but no one will say that we should spend less on other areas.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Stuart, you have been very patient.
