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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 1189 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Liz Smith
Thank you for your evidence so far. I want to ask about a specific issue. Although you are obviously not responsible for policy making, you have to respond to it. In recent times, at the UK and Scottish levels, we have seen some very late adjustments. At the time of the spring budget statement in the UK, the OBR stated that the welfare reforms would not deliver as much money as the Government had previously estimated, and so last-minute adjustments had to be made.
In Scotland, the Scottish Government was very late in announcing its mitigation of the two-child cap, and it did not provide enough information in time for the SFC to build that into a forecast. To what extent do such adjustments present a problem with forecasting? I know that you cannot set the policy in any sense, but does it create considerable difficulties when Governments make changes to their policy proposals that are a bit late for forecasting?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Liz Smith
Is it your view that we are getting better at forecasting over the short, medium and longer terms?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Liz Smith
Thank you for the excellent evidence that you have provided for us. I will concentrate on scrutiny by Parliament. Professor Bell, I noticed your interesting comment about the role of committees and why the committee system might not lead to the most effective scrutiny. Professor Spowage has made clear some of the issues with Parliament itself.
If we wanted to improve parliamentary scrutiny, would we need to make structural changes to the scrutiny process during the next session of Parliament, or is it a question of improving the culture within Government and the relationship between Government and Parliament regarding how scrutiny takes place?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Liz Smith
What would be the difference between what we have, which, I would agree, is not particularly cutting edge, and something like the arrangement that Finland has? You mentioned that it has a discreet body that has been set up to do that work. What is different about those two options that makes Finland a bit better?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Liz Smith
Would it help the pursuit of getting the right evidence? It would increase the scrutiny.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Liz Smith
Paragraph 1.2 of the OECD report is titled “The SFC has strengthened relationships with key stakeholders”, and you mentioned some of those stakeholders. Why do you think that your relationships have improved? Is it because your personal contacts are very strong, or is it because you have a greater understanding of those stakeholders and more data on what they are doing?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Liz Smith
Those are policy choices—they are not for you but for politicians. We cannot make effective, evidence-based decisions about public spending priorities until we know what the good-quality data is and what the effects of decisions are. That is basically what we are after. It has been a past concern of the Auditor General, as well as yourself, that we need to do more on that basis.
We have discussed twice before the possibility of having a finance bill, which I think could help us, but you are not going to answer that question. However, do you feel that a fiscal framework between central Government and local government could help that process?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Liz Smith
The Parliament is in need of processes that make it easier to understand where we have spent money well and where we have had issues. That is the crux of the matter.
I will come back to other matters later.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Liz Smith
That is helpful. Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 1 April 2025
Liz Smith
In your answer to the first question this morning, Professor Roy, you set out where you felt there had been improvement in data availability. You then raised some issues about areas in which you thought we could still make improvements. Will you do the same in relation to how effective we are in scrutinising public expenditure? Will you tell us where you think that the data is improving and where you think that we need more data in order to decide how effective we are being in scrutinising public expenditure?
