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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 2881 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
I will press you on that point. You say that the borrowing capacity has increased, which it has, but we thought that we were going to have a £700 million adjustment. Thankfully, we will not have a £700 million adjustment, but if we had done, the new borrowing limit would not have covered it. Is that correct?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
I certainly accept that that is positive, but it still worries me that certain things were not on the table and that a wider review was not on the table. I feel that there is a fundamental problem, even with the index per capita method. Our population is struggling because Westminster will not allow extra immigration into Scotland. We compete pretty well with all the regions of England apart from London and the south-east. Earlier, you said that, when it comes to inward investment, we are second only to London and the south-east. However, we are always second to London and the south-east. Therefore, it seems to me that, when we compare our economic growth with England’s, we are comparing ourselves with a country that is dominated by London and the south-east. Call me pessimistic, but I struggle to see how we will ever be able to compete with them, so we will always be financially disadvantaged.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
We have been told by witnesses that the public sector landscape is cluttered, given the number of organisations. Some of the individuals and organisations in Largs brought that up as well. Another issue that has been raised with us is that although individual organisations can make savings, that is not really reform. The police would never have combined into one organisation without a central Government push. How much is the Government thinking of pushing for the kind of reform that would involve reducing the number of bodies?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
We are still hoping that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury or others will come to the committee to explain some of the fiscal framework process to us. We have been having difficulty with that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
Deputy First Minister, I take your point that we will have another session on the fiscal framework, but if you do not mind, I want to ask you a few questions about it. If you want to come back to us at a later point, that would be okay.
We were all a bit surprised about how quick the whole process was. We had thought that the previous report would have been published, that there would have been outlines for a review and that it would have gone backwards and forwards. I was certainly caught by surprise when it was all agreed. I remember that, the previous time, it was John Swinney who was negotiating. The draft framework was put to Parliament and the Conservatives said that we should accept a poor deal, but John Swinney carried on arguing and we ended up with a better deal. Can you explain the timeline of what happened?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 3 October 2023
John Mason
That has worried the committee previously, and I think that we will look at that. Are there any updates that you can give? Can you say anything about timelines?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
John Mason
What is your view on the wider issue of a debate about whether we want Scotland to be a country with higher taxes and better public services or lower taxes and poorer public services?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
John Mason
Earlier, you gave the example that your business has to deal with different councils with different rules. On the other hand, people would say that the situation in the Highlands is different from the situations in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
John Mason
I do not want to go on too long on the topic. Some people have said that they had a good experience during the Covid pandemic because things happened more quickly and the public sector worked better, although other people have said that too many decisions were made without consultation. Did you have a good or bad experience through the pandemic?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
John Mason
It was bad. Thank you.
Ms Cook, I will go back to the previous question. Is the public sector too cluttered?