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 1482 contributions
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.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, everybody. We started this conversation with the convener asking about confidence. Sandy, what impact do you see on investor confidence and products in your sector of Rishi Sunak’s recent U-turn on net zero commitments?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
Continuing on the theme of confidence, I am interested in the nature of confidence in women-led businesses. How is that distinct from the situation in male-led businesses? What is your data telling you?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
You have led me on to my next area of questioning. It struck me that £15 million is a relatively low figure for entrepreneurialism, given the figures that were bandied about before the 2021 election. I appreciate that, as you said earlier, it is still early days but, given the new deal for business, and Mark Logan and Ana Stewart’s very good report on encouraging female entrepreneurship, what is your sense of there being a relentless focus on enabling more than half of our population?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
Okay.
A concern raised about the previous financial memorandum was the ability to scrutinise detail, given that it is a framework bill. How will the new approach of evolution rather than revolution, as set out by the convener, alleviate and mitigate them? What new risks will it introduce?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
Despite the Scottish Government’s protestations of continued focus, to what extent, if any, will the lack of confidence inevitably flow into funding flows, given the nature of how those operate out of the city? Is that lack of confidence inevitable, meaning that change in funding flows will take place, despite the Scottish Government’s protestations that it will continue on the path that it has set out?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I thank the witnesses for a very engaging session thus far. I want to ask about artificial intelligence. They say that AI is like quantum physics: if you claim that you understand it, you are merely proving that you do not. I note Professor Hayward’s recommendation 12 for the Scottish Government to establish a cross-sector commission on AI urgently. Do you agree that it is vital that industry and academics, as well as practitioners and Government, are involved in that? Will you set out briefly what key themes you would like to see evaluated? The nub of my question is this: is there, in your opinion, a risk that some of the known issues with AI, particularly cheating, could push people back into teaching to the exam to alleviate said cheating rather than embracing the much wider perspective that you have outlined this morning?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
On that point, do you think that the fact that you even had those two facets indicates that there is still a relatively low level of awareness, regardless of whether it is among Government or wider practitioners, of exactly what the threats and the opportunities are of artificial intelligence?