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 1548 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Douglas Lumsden
Okay. I will move on. When I was reading the report, it seemed—as I think Daniel Johnson mentioned earlier—that tax earnings are falling compared with the rest of the UK, social security charges are rising compared with the rest of the UK, the working population is falling compared with the rest of the UK, economic growth is lower than it is in the rest of the UK and recovery is slower in Scotland.
When I read about all that, I was concerned about how sustainable everything is. Would action need to be taken in the short term to try to stop some of the figures that we are seeing coming through?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Douglas Lumsden
Are there any other comments from anyone else?
I think that is a no.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Douglas Lumsden
We could talk about it for a long time and still not find solutions.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Douglas Lumsden
In terms of the fear that the prevention agenda cannot happen because local government, which is where a lot of the prevention takes place, is having its budget squeezed.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Douglas Lumsden
I want to ask about the north-east, not just because I represent North East Scotland but because the area is still a significant part of the Scottish economy. I remember the oil price crash in 2014 to 2016, when things were quite grim up in Aberdeen. The oil price has recovered and is in a good place, so why is the North Sea economy still holding the Scottish economy back?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Douglas Lumsden
My question follows on pretty well from what Michelle Thomson said. It is good to hear that the net zero capital spending plans are in the forecast. However, I have a concern about oil and gas, and the capital plans that are under pressure not to be spent as we move forward. If those investments did not happen, what would that do to the forecast? I presume that that would have a greater impact on the Scottish economy than it would in the rest of the UK, and there would then be greater divergence between the Scottish tax intake and the intake in the rest of the UK. Has any modelling been done on what would happen if some of those new investments, especially in the North Sea, did not take place?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Douglas Lumsden
So the forecasts that you are presenting assume that many of the investments in the North Sea will take place. If they did not happen, the forecasts would have to be revised, and there would probably be a negative impact on the Scottish economy.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 30 November 2021
Douglas Lumsden
At the end of the day, it is money that often creates barriers and silos, so we are back to the point about the shift in resources. During the pandemic, there was a lot more flexibility. People said, “We’ll worry about the cash later—let’s just look after our communities.”
I hate to even think about this, but I wonder whether there could be a service level agreement in place between the NHS and local authorities, for example. When you were talking about youth justice, I was trying to think of some examples. If local authorities could spend more on youth justice, there would probably be savings for the police and in other justice areas in the future. If local authorities could spend more on sports facilities, there could be a reduction in obesity, and savings for the NHS. Is there a way of linking outcomes to the organisations that spend money on early interventions, so that there is a balance?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 30 November 2021
Douglas Lumsden
To my mind, the local governance review provides an opportunity to break down some of the silos that you mentioned earlier. Is that your view? When will the results of the local governance review come through? Will the lessons that have been learned from the pandemic feed into the review?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 30 November 2021
Douglas Lumsden
You are right. Tillydrone hub in Aberdeen involved a great collaboration. What is holding us back from having more of that? Is it to do with finance or is it more about banging heads together?
