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
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
The first issue that I want to touch on is Whitehall transfers, in which, unusually, there is a reduction—we have become used to getting an increase in them. I note, in particular, a reduction of £37.74 million in city deals funding from His Majesty’s Treasury. I have recently asked questions about the Ayrshire growth deal; although it was signed in 2020 to great cross-party fanfare by the Labour local authorities, the United Kingdom Conservative Government, as it was, and the Scottish National Party Government, we havenae seen much action on it. The response that has come back has been, “Oh, well, Covid caused a slowdown.”
There was a wee bit of a flurry of activity in Ayrshire yesterday, but I am concerned about the overall delivery of city deal projects. It is said that the funding from the Treasury is being reduced because of the situation with city deals. Where are we with moving the deals forward? I think that all of us around the table have city deals in our areas that need to see progress.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Monumental?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You will be glad to know that I have a couple more questions before I open it up to the committee, minister.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Is there a reason why the finance and local government portfolio was chosen? Could the money have been placed in any portfolio? Going forward, this is going to be a regular situation—assuming that such sums are available in future years, which, of course, they might not be.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I do not think that anyone is in favour of compulsory redundancies per se, but it is important to optimise the delivery of services. If, in order to continue paying people who, frankly, no longer have the required skills and are effectively not able to deliver the services that are needed, you have to give others over and above what you would like to and say, “Look, if we give you this shedload of money, will you just leave?” We all know that is happening and that it is just inefficient, ineffective, expensive and not really affordable in the long term.
On what you said about the contingent workforce, it is important to put on the record that some £200 million savings have been brought about through the work that the Government is doing, which is very positive. However, we are looking for flexibility. Everybody accepts a one, two or three-year thing during a crisis, but the Government is bringing in policies such as that ludicrous one of not giving ministers a pay rise for 17 years or whatever it is, which, let us be honest, is just bonkers. I see that you are smiling, cabinet secretary, but you know that it is; people are bewildered by it, frankly. The Government must occasionally revisit policies; they should not be written on tablets of stone. That lack of flexibility means that we do not have the efficient delivery of services that we should have.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Kenneth Gibson
No members have indicated that they wish to comment, so I invite the cabinet secretary to wind up.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You hit the nail on the head when you pointed out that, frankly, revaluation is electorally toxic because of the impact of loss aversion on those whose council taxes would rise.
At Westminster, Labour has a majority of more than 150 and I am not seeing any big moves to change the system down there, which it could do without facing anything like the difficulty that we have here. It would face the same issues that any Government would face, as we do in Scotland.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I am referring not to portfolios but to specific projects, if you know what I mean. Money might be allocated to transport or whatever, but there is no pipeline that allows us to see what is being prioritised in particular portfolio spends, which is what the committee is keen to see.
We do not want there to be a considerable capital underspend this time next year. I know that it is very difficult for the Government because, with a 12 per cent increase in a year, you could end up with inflation if the capacity of the workforce to deliver what the Government wants does not exist. We do not want a 2 per cent increase in delivery and a 10 per cent increase in costs because of it. We are keen to see the budget being delivered in the most economically effective way.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That is four months away, and this session of Parliament has only another 13 months to run. A lot of the details in the response are about things that would seem to be fairly reasonable if we had another five years in the parliamentary session. However, from what I can ascertain, there seems to be not a lot of urgency in some of the work. My colleagues might think differently—although I would be surprised if they did—but these things just seem to roll on.
Incidentally, yesterday, the Minister for Public Finance, Ivan McKee, had a summit with a body of leaders about moving forward to look at public service reform and—lo and behold!—to develop a strategy on that. We still have strategies coming out of our ears.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That concludes stage 2 consideration of the bill. I thank the cabinet secretary. The stage 3 debate is due to take place next Tuesday.
That concludes the public part of our meeting. Our next agenda item, which will be taken in private, is consideration of a proposed contingent liability.
11:51 Meeting continued in private until 12:26.