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 1489 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I agree. Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I appreciate that it is a big area, and you are also coming off the back of questions that I myself asked of SNIB when I was a member of the Economy and Fair Work Committee.
I want to bring in Sandy Begbie and Louise Maclean to reflect on the focus on women in their sectors. I am aware that you have done a lot of work, and your statistics are different, but I would like to hear your reflections about entrepreneurialism, on the sum of money that we have mentioned and about the particular challenges for women in your sectors.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
My last question will give Louise Maclean a chance to come in. I imagine that there are very particular challenges for women working in hospitality. Returning to the original theme of the session, what specific things can the Scottish Government can do in your sector for the women working in it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
Before I ask my main questions, I want to go back to the earlier question about training. I think that Donna Bell said that some programme management training, particularly around financial management and scheduling, was involved, but from my experience as a programme manager many years ago, I know that those are the fundamentals. You cannot deliver anything without a basic knowledge of scheduling and financial matters.
Therefore, I have to say that that worried me a wee bit. What on earth made you think before that you could deliver anything without having that basic skill set in place first of all?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I am pleased to hear that, but it makes me wonder what on earth was happening before if that was not in place to tackle a bill of such scale. Those are fundamental skills. I have often seen situations where the focus has been on policy but there has not been the associated rigour in respect of delivery. Minister, are you now confident that that skill set is in place across the board, given how fundamental it is to delivery?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
Following on from that, I recall that one of our previous concerns about the use of secondary legislation was that such an approach lacked scrutiny of what could be significant spend over the long term. Will the new approach of evolution rather than revolution result in more secondary legislation, which might mean less on-going oversight of spend by the Finance and Public Administration Committee? Is that not a logical extension of the approach?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I would very much welcome further opportunities for us to capture baseline costs as near up front as possible, instead of seeing them slip into secondary legislation. Please feel free to write to the committee after the meeting with any additional ideas, because I suspect that this will be a concern for all members.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I have a wee point off the back of that. We have not discussed the national care service board and the governance therein today, although we may well at some point in future but, in the light of the current situation, I would expect to see the same rigour in its financial governance as in the policy element and standard governance. Again, I ask that you give that just as much attention, with a bottom-up as well as a top-down approach.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I want to pick up on the point that Liz Smith made. As well as finance, the committee is concerned with public administration, and we all know that the public purse is right under the cosh and every penny is a prisoner, if I may use that terminology. That suggests that the relentless focus on cost and value must be accentuated, but I am not necessarily sure that I am confident about that yet. For example, we all concur that the Verity house agreement is about a positive process but we do not yet understand how the fiscal framework will operate, because that work has not been done.
I suppose that the question is whether, as well as the top-down, policy-driven and thematic approach that you have outlined, you are doing the work to ensure that every single funding line is managed very tightly. That underpinning will give the committee confidence, not just on the finances but in terms of the public administration part of our remit.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
Being able to follow the money will work for us, I sense.