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 1231 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Liz Smith
You are quite right to say that you cannot comment on projected policies that the Scottish Government should employ, but I am interested in finding out whether, in all the analysis that you are doing and the data that you are using, you are aware of other countries or other attempts to try to reform public services in the way that you have described with regard to increasing efficiency, making use of technology or whatever. You have already given us three or four examples, but are there any other areas that, without projecting into Scottish Government policy, you think that we should be looking at?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Liz Smith
So you are recommending that the structure of oversight of the health service change a bit to facilitate that. I realise that we were due to speak to other witnesses, too, but does that include the integration joint board structure? Would you recommend any changes on that front?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Liz Smith
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Liz Smith
Thank you. That was helpful.
Obviously, there is a question to be asked about medium and longer-term planning for the economy; indeed, you cited that in your response to Michael Marra. The gap between Scottish Government projected expenditure and the tax take is a very serious issue, and I think that it focuses the committee’s attention on two questions. First, what is the scope for serious public sector reform that would help to address the problem? Secondly, how can we increase the tax take?
On the first of those issues, do you have suggestions for the most likely areas of public sector reform that could help with things, given the fact that there is almost certainly no scope to reduce spending on health, social security and social care? Indeed, as your own estimates have shown, spending on those areas is going to increase very substantially. What scope is there for public sector reform that could really help with that side of the equation?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Liz Smith
The second aspect of my question is about tax revenues, which you have mentioned. There are ways to increase tax revenue by changing tax rates and thresholds and so on, but there is a question around the change to tax structures. A debate is going on down south just now about whether inheritance tax should be replaced, and we have had lots of debates up here about whether council tax should change, and so on.
I go back to the analysis, of which you are aware, around other countries that have changed their tax structures. Is that debate an urgent one to have here in order to address some of the concerns that we have about a weakening tax return?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Liz Smith
I come back to the question about data sharing. Four of you have been up front about saying that there is considerable potential in that regard if we get it right, but you have flagged up issues around cybersecurity, the right kind of employment and confidentiality.
Are there any other potential barriers to that? Secondly, are they surmountable?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Liz Smith
I am really interested in that. Reading the room, I can see that the potential for change is considerable, but there are quite a lot of difficulties in the way. We need to work out how we might address those.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Liz Smith
Is there a dearth of people with the right skills or is the competition so wide that everybody is trying to access those people?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Liz Smith
I just want to know whether data sharing can work. Most of the witnesses have said that the potential is very considerable, but we have to make it work.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Liz Smith
Obviously, there is a difference between the tax structures and the rates of tax, which, in many ways, tend to be much more political.
Ms Payne, when you answered the first question, you recommended that, with tax, we need to ensure that Scotland is competitive and is the best place to come to live, work and invest in. What recommendations would you make to ensure that, on a tax structure basis, Scotland is more competitive with the rest of the UK and, indeed, other countries?
