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
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Agenda item 3 is formal consideration of motion S6M-16546. I invite the minister to speak to and move the motion.
Motion moved,
That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Scottish Landfill Tax (Standard Rate and Lower Rate) Order 2025 (SSI 2025/41) be approved.—[Ivan McKee]
Motion agreed to.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
They will be “lost forever”? You are saying that there is no pressure on the committee, then.
One thing that is said under your policy objectives is that the order will make things
“more streamlined and flexible than primary legislation”.
Has the Scottish Government considered at any point trying to make the process of primary legislation more streamlined and flexible?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You represent the rural Highlands and Islands region. One concern that has been raised is about how we ensure that we are able to provide an equitable service. I have rural areas in my constituency, as do most members around the table, with the exception of John Mason and possibly Michelle Thomson. That is a real issue for many of us and for many communities. How would you ensure that the provisions of the bill are delivered equitably, from Stranraer to Shetland?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I appreciate that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That has exhausted committee members’ questions, but I still have one or two more.
Going back to the issue that John Mason raised of the £38 million, I think that the concern is not with the policy issue itself but whether the figure is accurate. In other words, the issue is not where you find £38 million, but whether the £38 million—or even the £28 million mentioned—is the right figure.
Even if it were, the Scottish Ambulance Service has said:
“In a time of economic downturn with current budget cuts and constraints it is challenging to imagine how the costs of providing what is outlined in the Bill could be achieved not to mention the ability to develop the associated workforce and infrastructure.”
COSLA, too, has said that
“whilst we agree there would be significant initial costs, we do not agree that there would be a flattening and declining costs in the medium-to-longer term.”
That is notwithstanding the fact that it has access to the same Dame Carol Black report that you have. Moreover, I note that Alcohol Focus Scotland has said that
“estimates for additional investment in services contained in the Financial Memorandum to deliver the aims of the Bill fall short of what is required to ensure equitable access to all of those requiring support.”
You have said that you have used the databases that are available to come up with the £38 million figure, but one of the things that has come through in the evidence that we have received is that there has been an underestimation of on-going and capital support. The Aberdeen city alcohol and drug partnership, which you have touched on, says:
“The Bill uses baseline figures and assumes those figures can all be attributed to a proposed narrow definition of substance use ‘treatment’ with a clinical diagnosis. In reality the current pot of resource available will also go into a wider range of activity drug education, children / family services, justice services, a huge range of third sector services, injecting equipment provision, harm reduction, justice services, consumables, medicines, travel, administration and other indirect costs such as recruitment and training ... To achieve the proposal of all existing funding going into the defined list of ‘treatments’ there would be huge reductions in cross system activity and a significant impact on indirect costs.”
10:45The committee took evidence on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. As you know, we were unhappy with that financial memorandum, and the Government came back with another. We were also not happy with the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill’s financial memorandum, because it was not as up to date as it could have been, and we had the cabinet secretary come back to us in that regard. Given the kinds of issue that have been raised in the submissions that we have received, the fact that there appears to be an underestimation in on-going cost—capital and so on—and that, as you said yourself, the financial memorandum was prepared before the change in employer national insurance contributions was perceived, is there an argument for revisiting the financial memorandum?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
That would be very helpful to you in getting the bill through. I will not go through the further comments that have been made by the Aberdeen city partnership, but you will know that it has raised a number of concerns around housing, employment, deprivation and the long-term availability of substances. If those issues could be looked at and you could come back with something a lot more robust, that would be very helpful.
I turn to Dame Carol Black’s comments about preventative spend, which, arguably, the bill involves. We and our predecessor committees have wrestled with that topic since 2011, and it is an absolute nightmare. Whenever we look at the budget for the forthcoming year or slightly further ahead, many organisations come to us and say that, if we will just spend X amount this year, they can save us three, four, five, six or seven times more in some indeterminate period ahead. Therefore, if more could be done to pin down the relevant savings over a specific time period, that would also be very helpful.
In saying that, I think that this has been a very worthwhile session, and I appreciate the responses that the committee has received.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, why not? That is something that we should look at.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Indeed.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I thank the minister and Mr Macleod for their evidence. We will publish a short report that sets out our decision on the draft instrument.
11:27 Meeting continued in private until 11:55.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 11 March 2025
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, but that £160 million is for dealing with the 7,000-odd people who come forward for treatment, not all of whom take it up—we know that about a third do not go forward with it—and those who take up alcohol services. If we increase the budget from, say, £160 million to £198 million, as is suggested in the financial memorandum, but the number of people who seek treatment for drugs alone doubles from more than 7,000 to 15,000, that £198 million will get blown pretty quickly, assuming that all the staff and facilities are already in place.
