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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 3120 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
You mentioned capital, and we understand that there have been huge increases in material and labour costs at rates that are higher than inflation. Given that, how is the Scottish Government planning its capital investment? Because of the changes, does it look as though we will get less for the same amount of money? Given that our capital budget’s buying power is decreasing, is the Scottish Government looking to increase its capital budget in order to do the same with more money?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Time is against us, folks, but I will take a brief question from Daniel Johnson.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
It seems that there are no further questions from committee members, so I will ask one or two more, if I may.
Some considerable changes have been made to the net zero and transport budget, but there is not a lot of detail. For example, on rail services, page 66 of the budget revision document just says,
“Additional funding to support rail services”,
for which it shows £77.3 million. We also see increases for buses, airports and light rail, but the percentages vary significantly. For example, rail gets 5.3 per cent, buses get 1.2 per cent, Highland and Island Airports gets 8.1 per cent, and light rail gets 4 per cent. What is the reasoning behind those differences? What detail can you give on additional funding to support rail services, for example?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Sure—but I was asking about a specific issue. The changes that have been made this time are significant and the pandemic has contributed to them.
Transport is an obvious area where additional resources have had to be put in—for example, to make sure that the railways could continue to run when the number of passengers diminished. In what areas of the budget have savings been made—not because of cuts, but because the budget that was allocated is no longer required? What areas in the budget have been most able, because of the pandemic, to provide funding for the Scottish Government to reallocate?
11:00Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Stephen Boyle, a lot of that is obviously in your area of interest. One thing that you said in your submission was:
“Our report last year on affordable housing noted that the Scottish Government had not set out the outcomes it intended to achieve from its investment.”
Is there an issue there about not being able to see the wood from the trees sometimes? Building houses is obviously a good thing, as you get new, modern houses that are easier to heat, safer and more comfortable, et cetera, but is that an aspect of it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
To go back to housing, it is about whether people have a warm, comfortable, safe home and what impact that has on mental or physical health as we go forward.
I will stick with questions to Stephen Boyle, to change the order a wee bit. In March 2016, when I was convener of the Finance Committee in session 4, we wrote to the Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, with a number of recommendations and proposals. We asked whether borrowing powers under the fiscal framework to fund preventative spend, creating a culture of innovation and the use of digital technology could provide potential solutions to achieving a decisive shift towards prevention.
At that time, after the Finance Committee had spent five years on preventative spend, which we went back to on a number of occasions—as Professor Mitchell in particular will recall; he gave a lot of evidence, as he has commented today—we were very optimistic about the prevention agenda. Obviously, there is now a feeling that it has not transpired as we would have wished.
Nonetheless, what progress do you feel has been made in creating a culture of innovation and delivering improved milestones, benchmarking and performance targets? How far have we moved forward? Are we 10 per cent, 40 per cent or 70 per cent of the way there? I am trying to find out where we are on the way up the mountain at this point.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Public Service Reform and Christie Commission
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you. I open up the session to questions from other members, starting with Daniel Johnson.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I thank the minister and his officials for their evidence and my colleagues for their questions.
Agenda item 2 is formal consideration of the motion, which I invite the minister to move. Members have no further comments, so I will put the question. The minister has not moved the motion yet.
Motion moved,
That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Budget (Scotland) Act 2021 Amendment Regulations 2021 [draft] be approved.—[Tom Arthur]
Motion agreed to.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Agenda item 1 is an evidence-taking session with the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth on the draft Budget (Scotland) Act 2021 Amendment Regulations 2021. I welcome to the meeting Tom Arthur, who is joined by Scottish Government officials Niall Caldwell and Scott Mackay, and I invite him to make a short opening statement.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you. You talked about the NHS and mentioned that the autumn budget revision allocates £834 million to the health budget for Covid-19 response. However, that is reduced to a net increase to the health and social care portfolio as a whole of £473.2 million. Do you believe that the transfers—which include £292.6 million to social justice, housing and local government to support integration, school counselling services, carer’s act, free personal and nursing care and the living wage—fulfil the spirit of why that money was allocated as consequentials in the first place?
