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 728 contributions
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
Good morning, cabinet secretary. I will follow up on the convener’s first question, which was about the strategic framework.
Over the past few weeks, we have taken a lot of evidence about the continuing costs of Covid-19 and preparedness across the public sector for potential future variants or a rise in cases. For example, the NHS must maintain investment in vaccination, surveillance and personal protective equipment. You mentioned the figure of £485 million in the current year. I do not expect you to come up with any numbers, but projecting ahead, do you expect a similar figure or a lower one to be required in next year’s budget? What is your thinking about the level of public sector investment that will be required against the risk of a future outbreak?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
A vague number.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
I appreciate that you cannot put a figure on the costs, but it was interesting to hear that you understand that there will be continuing costs.
We heard evidence from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities about some of the pressures on its budget and we heard something similar from NHS representatives. Do you expect next year’s budget to include a specific line about additional resource being put into local government or NHS boards to reflect the issues that you have highlighted?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
Thank you. In order to interrogate that further, I have one more question.
I have been contacted by constituents who are employed in the track and trace programme for example. That programme is coming to an end, so their contracts are up. Those people, who have been working in the public sector, will no longer be working in the public sector. Although there might be a need to re-energise that programme at some point, that will mean a loss of head count. That is understood, but when you are talking about potential head count reductions in the public sector, do you anticipate going beyond that?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
Okay. Thank you.
You mentioned public sector pay. The resource spending review envisages public sector pay being held at 2022-23 levels. That is prior to the increases that have been agreed. Even at that level, the review anticipates that if overall total public sector pay remains the same, but with some increases in pay rates, that infers a reduction in head count across the public sector. If that is to happen, where will the reduction come?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
Do any other witnesses want to contribute?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
Good morning. I want to ask about how we can rebuild public services. I will start by directing my questions to Sarah Watters.
The Scottish Government’s Covid recovery strategy talks about
“accelerating inclusive, person-centred public services.”
I think that, post-Covid, we have an opportunity to think about whether we can redesign public services to, for example, move towards providing a lot more services online, which we have realised is a lot easier to do than it was previously.
At the same time, the resource spending review proposes substantial increases in health, social care and social security but real-terms cuts across the board in other areas of public spending. How do we square that circle? How do we move towards the more inclusive, person-centred delivery of public services at the same time as we are seeing reductions in the budget?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
Does Sarah Watters want to come back in?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
I am sure that other members of the panel want to come in on this issue, but I have two follow-up questions that relate to what you have just said.
You talked about the overall reduction in local government staff numbers. Do you have any sense of whether overall demand has gone up, gone down or stayed the same compared to the pre-Covid situation?
You mentioned that there was a need for other parts of the public sector to catch up in terms of reform. What parts are you talking about?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2022
Murdo Fraser
Good morning. Before I come to my main question, I want to ask Mary Morgan a follow-up question on the answer that she gave in response to the convener.
I am interested in the numbers that you quoted regarding the reduction in staff in relation to the vaccination programme and contact tracing. Should we—perish the thought—have a new wave of Covid, or a new variant of Covid, as we go into the winter, how practical and realistic would it be for you to staff up again to the numbers that we have seen previously? Do you think that that is going to be necessary? If it is, can you do that without pulling people back out of NHS front-line services, given the tightness of the labour market elsewhere?