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 3120 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I sometimes think that we look too much at what is happening in the UK and that we should look further beyond our borders, where there might be many more ideas for us to look at.
That brings us to the end of our time. I thank our guests, David Eiser and Graeme Roy, for again providing thought-provoking and helpful evidence for our scrutiny.
We will allow our witnesses to leave and then I will take a couple of minutes to update members of the committee on a couple of important matters.
Meeting closed at 13:01.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Indeed.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
The decline in the number of younger people in the labour force has come up quite a lot. We discussed it to some extent in our private session before the meeting. What is the reason for that decline? Is it that more young people are in higher education? Is it our lower birth rates, or the fact that there are fewer young migrants in the population? Why is the situation here so different from that in the rest of the UK?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I have to say that it is all a bit vague. I think that colleagues will want to explore the issue in some depth, because there are no numbers against the £620 million to explain how it comes together.
With regard to your forecasting, how has your thinking evolved since August? Why have there been changes in your judgment over that period? One of the main surprises that came out of the budget was the £190 million reduction in the net tax position, relative to your previous forecast. Will you talk us through how you arrived at that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
If we take the nadir of business rates to 2027, the growth will be 69 per cent. That is why I did not take the nadir: it was from 2022-23 to 2026-27. I discounted what was an unusual year, but there is still a 25 per cent growth in rates, which is quite a lot for the business community to cough up. That is why I was wondering about your view on where that money will come from. Is that increase being driven by inflation? It is at twice the level of growth. Why are you predicting an increase from £2.8 billion to £3.5 billion over that four-year period? It seems quite a big increase in a relatively short period.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
We are scrutinising this budget, not the budget that we might like to see.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Over the past few years, how accurate has the Office for Budget Responsibility been, compared with the SFC? There are significant differences in the forecasts for the next five years; the SFC predicts that the tax take in Scotland in five years will be £486 million more than the OBR has predicted. It is interesting that the OBR predicts that £78 million will come in from Scottish landfill tax while the SFC predicts only £18 million because of the impact of policy. That is a £60 million difference, which is quite a huge difference for that tax. To help us to consider how the OBR is doing relative to the SFC, will you say how accurate the two organisations’ predictions have been over the past few years?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
We will soon see.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been quite excoriating in its critique of the UK budget, and I noticed that one of the comments was that
“A crucial ingredient in this year’s policy decisions has been the way in which OBR forecasts appear to have driven policy.”
You touched on that a wee bit in response to Michelle Thomson’s questions, but what can and should the UK and Scottish Governments do differently in terms of fiscal policy? There has been a lot of critique—given your role, I understand that—but do you have more positive suggestions for how we can make things better?
11:15Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
What should Scotland’s spending priorities be, given what Daniel Johnson said about there being a jump in resources this year, but a real-terms decline in the following two years? Sustainability of the public finances is, obviously, a major issue for us in Scotland.
