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 1235 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
I think that £1.4 billion was probably at the upper end of what we expected, but there was no guarantee that the number would not have been far less than that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
The broader context is that there was a significant capital spending reduction for this year. Although it looks as though that will be largely reversed as we go into next year, that is the context that we are working in, which, as we know, has put pressure on capital spending.
We do not seem to have any more information on the timing of specific projects. If you have information on that timeline, that is obviously what is happening; I will come back to you if there are any more specifics on the timing of the update.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
That is a good question. This week and next, we are publishing more data on the exercise that we conducted over the summer on what public bodies and, indeed, the Scottish Government have spent on corporate functions in the broadest sense, internally and in relation to acquired services. This is the first time that the exercise has been done. The data, by necessity, is a couple of years out of date, because it is culled from annual published reports from more than 100 public bodies, but it is allowing us to accelerate our work in looking for savings in specific aspects of public spending, be that on estates, digital, shared services, procurement frameworks and a range of other areas in which we believe that, by having visibility on a more granular level, we can drive more efficient ways of spending money.
As I said, that programme is under way. That data will provide us with more levers and tools to accelerate that work. You are right that there is then a question about how that work translates into how this budget process looks. At a macro level, reductions in those areas would be reflected in the budget lines. You would see the same budget line delivering more or you would be getting the same from a smaller budget line, because you would be working more efficiently. That, of course, is the intention.
However, you are right that we need to develop a mechanism to provide more visibility on the progress in that area. Part of the issue is that the data is historical—it is a couple of years old. We are conscious of and are spending a bit of time thinking about making the link between that and what we are delivering in real time in relation to what that looks like in the updates.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
You have to recognise that a significant amount of money is being spent on the net zero transition. However, you are right that, as the cabinet secretary and I have made clear, those ScotWind moneys have had to be used in the short term. In the absence of clarity on the consequentials from the UK autumn budget, it was necessary to use that to deal with inflation pressures on the health service and the pay awards that public service workers rightly deserved. Without using that money, it would not have been possible to deal with that at that time. Now that there is more clarity on the UK funding position, we are able to work towards reversing that use of ScotWind.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
What was the alternative?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
It was £600 million on that list, was it not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
It relates to reduced workload and delivery costs for the winter fuel payment. Social Security Scotland had been planning to expand in order to be able to deliver that benefit, but that will not now be happening.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
It should not puzzle the committee because, as I said, on a weekly basis, we assess the pressures on the budget and the expected income from consequentials. Within that process, we make an assessment of where we are, we look at the gaps, and we take a view. At that point, we rightly took the view that the pressures were such that, rather than waiting any longer, it was necessary to make adjustments to the budget and make hard decisions on some spending.
11:15Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
As I said, we would be operating within a range.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Ivan McKee
I do not disagree. If we can do that, either around decisions that have been made or in terms of evidence-based policy, I would be delighted to work with the committee on that point.
