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 1499 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
I very much look forward to reading the review. I have one more question, which takes us back to where we started. The first thing that you mentioned was culture. Thus far, you have not reflected much on attitudes to risk and our cultural perception of failure. Will you give us your reflections on that? I know that you said at the beginning that culture can be changed easily, but it seems to me that our appetite for and attitude to risk is deeply ingrained, as is how we perceive failure, which, of course, in business terms, is simply learning. I would like some finishing reflections on that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
If I asked you whether this is a gender-friendly Parliament in all its facets, I assume that you would say that it is. I would then challenge you to say how you know that that is the case.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
I want to almost turn the matter on its head. You are describing some collection and some output, which, if you chose to, you could pull into one report on one facet. I suppose that I am asking when you last produced—or whether you have ever produced—a similar report entirely from the point of view of the female population in every single facet. Have you ever considered doing something like that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
I have every sympathy with the situation in which the Deputy First Minister finds himself while he is operating as the finance secretary. However, I am asking for clarity from a business investment point of view. Businesses will be determining at what point they will seek to make investments and therefore will need to know what the Scottish Government’s appetite is for that, given the constraints that you have outlined. Do you plan to make further announcements to give much-needed certainty to various business sectors, of which construction is one?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
I want to pick up on the point about behaviour change and I want to make two more points. Attempts to model behaviour change must be increasingly complex, given the complexity of the existing fiscal framework and the wider economic environment. Are the models that you use evolving? Are they fit for purpose? That was a slightly technical question.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
Michelle Hegarty, do you want to add something? Okay, you are feeling confident. I am sure that the committee will scrutinise that.
I will pick up on something else. Jackson Carlaw, you are probably pleased that we are not talking about the information technology system today. I felt more than a little sympathy for you last time we met, because you are accountable—rather than responsible—for the operation of that huge outfit.
I have two questions. You are probably aware that, under our remit for public administration, the committee will be looking at decision making, as a discipline in and of itself, within the Scottish Government. I have recently seen examples of risk assessment decisions being made, based on the probability of an adverse outcome, but looking at the impact on only one key stakeholder group. That is an obvious example. Given that you are accountable, Jackson, and that there are professional staff in place, how do you assess your accountability? How do you know that the decision making is as robust as it can be? I appreciate that you are doing a very good job on behalf of all parliamentarians, but you are quite exposed. How do you assess that risk to yourself? You get it in the neck if things go slightly awry.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
I utterly appreciate and understand that; based on my previous career, I would consider what you are describing as the norm and what I would expect to see in place. I am probing the fact that where you have collaborative bodies that work well together and people are generally nice and get on well, it introduces a risk of groupthink, where insufficient challenge creeps in over a period, just because people are nice and believe that each side is doing a professional piece of work. There is no reason why they would not think so. That may well come up again in our decision-making inquiry.
How robustly do you ensure healthy tension as a body, given that that is absolutely necessary and can diminish over time in any organisation? Are you actively putting that at the forefront? I am thinking particularly of you, Jackson, given that you are accountable and it is your neck on the line.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
My next question concerns the disaggregation of data, which is a theme that I keep following. I ask organisations, including the SPCB, whether they routinely disaggregate all the data that they collect by sex, because we cannot effect change without that. However, every time I ask that question of any body, I find that the answer is no. They do not routinely disaggregate the data. If we do not do that, how can we effect change to ensure parity? I put that same question to you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, and thank you for attending today. I echo Jackson Carlaw’s comments about the staff. The operation of the Parliament is a huge undertaking: many people do not appreciate that. I will happily take up the offer of a tour of the basement and promise not to press any red buttons.
Slightly unusually, I start by going back to Brexit and taking issue with the convener. If I were in a similar position to you, I would need to give careful consideration to the number of full-time equivalent posts required for forthcoming work on Brexit. I know from anecdotal conversations with the clerks that the number of legislative consent memorandums, and the complexity and scrutiny of that work, has been quite considerable in the past year. When I talk about retained European Union law and the back-end scrutiny of that in the coming year, that is usually greeted by horror from the clerks whom I speak to, because so much is unknown.
I am not certain about the specific additional head count provision that you have made for Brexit, given that retained EU law might lead to circa 4,000 pieces of legislation folding. I am sure that it will not come to that, but the number is certainly considerable. What is the specific head count and how confident are you in the provision of that head count?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Michelle Thomson
Where you collect data, do you routinely disaggregate it for every data item? The issue flows into your procurement policy and so on. Only by collecting data can we start to move that forward.
10:45