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: 14 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
I suppose, though, that that takes you into delay territory. I am thinking about an example in which there has been a delay because there has been a change of circumstances with a solicitor or a client. Will a client always be able to draw on the necessary data required to meet your criteria to have the case expedited after that length of delay? I am thinking of an example from 2017.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
You lead me on to a wider point, which is that it is difficult for ordinary members of the public to understand the complexity of the fiscal framework and its implications. I appreciate that most members of the public find it hard to understand that there is a direct impact on tax take by limiting the Scottish Government’s borrowing powers to pay for capex projects.
Perhaps a wider area is that people understand that limits on immigration mean that fewer people are paying tax. Are you considering how we make it clear to people that although we agree that there is an issue with the breadth of our tax base—everybody agrees with that—there are standard levers that you might want to pull to increase it? It is probably not mentioned in the report, but can you see that a differentiated immigration policy, fundamentally to increase the tax base, should be part of your discussions with the UK Government?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
You will be aware that the committee is looking at public sector review, spending and so on, in the light of rolling back from the resource spending review. I note your three key missions, part of which will involve looking at public bodies and public sector reform. To what extent are you open to thinking ambitiously about that?
Part of my private worry is that agencies may look simply at efficiencies—although I suspect that a lot of them have been doing that for years, due to public sector constraints. We had an interesting comment that perhaps the bolder and more ambitious projects would need to be mandated by the Government. My simple question is, are you going to be able to have a level of ambition in what you look at? I appreciate that such projects have a cost in themselves and are very complex and time consuming. I do not negate that. I want to get a sense of whether it is about more than efficiencies.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, cabinet secretary. Thank you for joining us. One of the things that the committee discussed with the Scottish Fiscal Commission at last week’s meeting was the 14 per cent cut in capital expenditure from 2023-24 to 2028-29. I asked the SFC for clarification on the possible implications of that in relation to limiting our ability to invest. Traditionally, economists say that you should invest when your economy is not doing so well. The clear point that emerged was that capital expenditure has a direct impact on productivity. We know that there is a massive issue with productivity in the UK and, because of those limitations, there is an issue with productivity in Scotland. Have you been able to model that diminution of productivity? It does not seem to be understood that lower productivity leads to a lower tax take and that a lower tax take leads to less money being available to spend for public services. I do not know whether, behind the scenes, you or some of your officials are able to model that, because a 14 per cent cut in real terms will have a direct flow-through to the tax take available to spend on vital public services.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
Thanks for that clarification. Given the autonomy of all the different boards, the Centre for Sustainable Delivery was designed to stop NHS boards working as autonomous units. Is it your experience that it does that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
Yes.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
I went through your submission and I note that you mention deficit reduction, efficiency in delivery and distributed working. I have asked you about staff—you corrected me to say that the issue is banding—and about the number of territorial boards and the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. At the start of this inquiry, Police Scotland commented that it would not have been created had that not been mandated. Are they the sorts of things that you would expect to see mandated by central Government? Is your primary focus therefore on the areas that you have set out both in your evidence today and in your submission?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good morning. What has been said leads on quite neatly to my questions on capital expenditure. We know that block grant funding from the UK Government is the largest component of the Scottish Government’s capital funding. The commission’s projections suggest that that funding will, in nominal terms, be cut by 14 per cent between 2023-24 and 2028-29. How will that cut affect the productive capacity of the Scottish economy?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good. Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
Okay, thank you.
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