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 1489 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
I have a last wee question just to finish off. It strikes me that, because of the limitations instilled by a fixed budget, the narrative is continually about revenue spend, for very good reason—of course that needs to be scrutinised and monitored—without there necessarily being the same kind of awareness in the body politic of the implications of capital expenditure in investment terms. Is that something that, as economists, you see happening almost as an inevitable consequence? I can see that you are nodding.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
I will explore that a bit more. Could you all, as top-notch economists, say how productive capacity can be affected by low levels of capital expenditure? For example, you have talked about AI, research and development, productivity, economic growth and sustainable wellbeing or otherwise. It would be useful to get that on the record.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
I meant with regard to changing something at significant scale—such as, for context, the 14 territorial boards and the five national boards—and restructuring it. I mentioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. I am talking about that scale of change and organisational restructuring. Is that something that you would expect to see mandated by the Government rather than being fed upwards from you or people who you face off with in other boards?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
To follow on from that, you have indicated that the Scottish Government may receive further funding from sources other than the block grant. What are those sources? What do you see as the key risks for their not materialising? In other words, I am trying to flesh out the extent to which those sources can be relied on relative to the block grant, which we know has been significantly cut.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Last week, we had interesting evidence from Police Scotland in which it was made clear that that body simply would not have been created had it not been mandated by Government. I want to ask you some perception questions about your world. In Scotland, with 5.5 million people, we have 14 territorial boards and five national boards, and there is duplication of human resources directors, information technology directors and finance directors. Have you and your equivalents had discussions about attempting to change the scale and the current organisational structure? I know that the British Medical Association has released a report on that, but have you looked at the issue or suggested some change with your face-off equivalents in other boards?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
My next question follows on from that. Local boards might employ individual staff under different terms and conditions. Does that inhibit flexibility when trying to move staff around? Is there not the same ease of transition because they are employed by different boards? Do you experience that when trying to attract people into your area?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
You have prompted my next question. Off the top of your head, do you have any figures to show how capital investment in the UK over, say, the past 10 years compares with that in other states?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
So any cut in the block grant has a potentially significant impact.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Economic and Fiscal Forecasts and Medium-term Financial Strategy
Meeting date: 6 June 2023
Michelle Thomson
Is that approach even more prevalent in Scotland due to the tendency to focus on revenue because of the fixed budget?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform Programme
Meeting date: 30 May 2023
Michelle Thomson
I want to go back to cover one idea with David Page before we move on to look at some general themes.
Mr Page, you did not mention one area that is habitually difficult when making transformational change at scale: the merging of different cultures. People often carry out due diligence on legal or financial matters but forget about culture. You were, in essence, bringing lots of different cultures together. How did you actively manage that and what have been the outcomes?
