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 3162 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
It would be useful for capital allocation as well, which is something that the committee has talked about for a long time.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I was hoping that you would. [Laughter.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You talked about institutional structure. Is there any way in which that can be improved?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
It is difficult for both the OBR and the SFC, but we need to look at whether it is possible to reduce the gaps.
In your submission, you said:
“Differences in modelling approaches, data used, and judgements applied can all contribute to differences between our and the SFC’s forecasts.”
How can those differences in modelling and data use be reduced?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You talked about timing. Obviously, that is a critical issue, and there is only so much that you can do about the gap between your forecasts and those of the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Can anything be done to tweak the timing in order to reduce those gaps?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Is one issue the fact that committees do not want stakeholders to criticise them for suggesting that money be moved within their area of responsibility? For example, it was made clear very early in the life of this Parliament that, when committees make suggestions for spending changes, they cannot just say that they want more money for education, health or whatever, because we would end up with every committee calling for more money for everything, which we are well used to seeing outside stakeholders—and the Opposition—routinely doing with budgets. For example, a health committee might not want to take money away from the hospital sector to put it into primary care. Does that inhibit the work of committees?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thanks. That is very clear.
There are no further questions from members. Is there anything else that you wish to say that you feel that we have not touched upon? Is there anything that you would like to clarify or point out to the committee?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I will ask a final question on zero-based budgeting. Professor Bell, who will be giving evidence very soon, said in his submission:
“The UK Spending Review is a comprehensive ‘zero-based’ review that is forcing departments to justify the entirety of their spending, rather than the increment requested relative to last year’s baseline. It will involve ‘challenge panels’ including experts from the private sector and academia who will scrutinize departmental spending plans.”
What are the implications of that for the OBR?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you. I am pleased that you have touched on the OBR’s review and that the Treasury has accepted the 10 recommendations. I was going to ask you about that, but you have covered a lot of what I was going to ask, so I will ask one final question before I open up the session to colleagues.
In your submission, you state:
“The OBR’s remit includes the responsibility to evaluate the long-term sustainability of the UK public finances and assess fiscal risks.”
The SFC has published a fiscal sustainability report, which the committee will be interrogating—or at least questioning—and taking evidence on next Tuesday. What kind of work have you been doing with the SFC in relation to its report and your own work?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You have pointed out that you are, of course, not responsible for the formal calculation of the block grant adjustments, which are produced by the UK Treasury. Let me phrase it in this way: would it be helpful if the OBR actually did that?
