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 1659 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 March 2024
Michelle Thomson
Good morning. I will follow up on a point that Liz Smith made. I have raised with the Deputy First Minister a question about inefficiency related to the annual budget process and significant in-year changes. It seems to me that that must incur a significant amount of sunk costs in redoing and repositioning things, and so on. Am I right in having that perception, and is it also your perception?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 March 2024
Michelle Thomson
You have set out what I thought, and very clearly. I suppose the point that I am making is that there is a cost to the inefficiency. If you were working in a law firm, you would itemise every hour to say what goes to this client and what goes to that client. Have you ever considered collecting the cost of inefficiency as fiscal events occur, and of late notification? A number being put on that inefficiency could very well be quite compelling.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 March 2024
Michelle Thomson
I will watch that with interest.
My last point comes back to a question that I previously asked you about police pensions and the extent to which the increase in them—and, therefore, provision for them—came about a result of Covid-19. I thank you for your reply, in which I think you pointed out—and I am paraphrasing here—that that was not due to Covid-19 but was the result of the move from a final salary to a career average pension scheme. The legal challenge in that respect will also apply to other public sector professionals such as teachers, because they face the same issue, but the fact is that we have seen a difference with regard to the rate at which police officers are retiring. As a result, the change to the provision—compared with that of, say, teachers—was not necessarily entirely due to the change to the police’s pension arrangements, given that it did not equally apply to teachers. Do you have any reflections on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Aggregates Tax and Devolved Taxes Administration (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 March 2024
Michelle Thomson
You are correctly introducing another complexity for the bill, but that is good because that is what we want to tease out. Have we got the data to draw on to arrive at some of these decisions? I am not sure what data your members will routinely gather and submit as part of the existing processes that tease out all the different areas that the Scottish Government will have.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 March 2024
Michelle Thomson
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 March 2024
Michelle Thomson
I will finish by noting some of the examples that you have given and pointing out that such additional post-Covid sums were exceptional—I think that we all appreciate that. Now that, with the recent changes, we have a more bedded-down fiscal framework, we have actually baked in some of these inefficiencies, and we need to try to understand what they might look like.
I have one other question that follows on from that. In reality, to what extent will the complexities, uncertainties and inefficiencies in the Scottish and UK Governments’ fiscal framework be reflected in the fiscal framework that is developed for local councils through the Verity house agreement? In other words, will they, at an even deeper level than might have been the case before, be saying, “This is no use to us, because it doesn’t allow us to plan”? Do you expect that what you as a Government are dealing with will, in effect, be replicated in that way?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
I will pick up on the way in which I framed the question. In your written evidence, many of you present how Covid has led to more dysregulated behaviour, but I am interested in not just the increase but whether there are instances of certain behaviours or issues having become embedded. Depending on the learning stage or age that the child is at, putting in place mitigations to overcome that would be extremely difficult.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
I can see smiles from people who obviously want to come in. Dinah Aitken has caught my eye, and I can see that Deborah Best and Irene Stove are keen to come in, too.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Deborah, I know that you have not had the chance to contribute yet. Good morning.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Have we been able to capture what we now know, with hindsight, would have been the key intervention points at which behaviour tipped into dysregulation? Have we gained new insights into that? In other words, is that a positive from the pandemic? We knew before what the key points of intervention were. Are they still the same and have they simply been exacerbated, or do we have any new insights? That is what I am trying to get to.
