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 749 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
It does—the example is quite useful in itself. We know that the increase in health spending is about £2 billion, which means that there is about £2 billion to find elsewhere. If the Government is saying—not unreasonably—that there are still on-going costs from Covid across the board, it should be more straightforward to identify that spend in the non-health budget lines. However, it is not entirely clear where that is in the budget, outside health.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
I wanted to follow up on David Eiser’s point about whether the budget is seven point something up or seven point something down. I will confound you both by saying that I can recognise both figures and not be rigid about my view on it.
I recognise that, in the total figure, because of Covid there is approximately £5 billion resource funding in the current financial year. However, to my mind, the key point is that throughout the debate around Covid spend, the Government has been pretty clear both publicly and privately that that money cannot be used for non-recurring budget items. We can all accept that Covid has not completely gone away, so the costs that we incur have not disappeared, which is why we end up in that fuzzy middle position. Is there an issue around transparency and about the clarity on how that £5 billion has been allocated, whether it has been allocated, strictly speaking, on non-recurring Covid items, and what in the current budget is Covid related?
This budget is particularly difficult to track. Several items are jumping between budget lines and it is not entirely clear what in the budget is directed at Covid. Is that a fair assessment of why we find ourselves in this position?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
That is fascinating. I think that we need a committee session on that topic alone.
Does David Eiser have anything to add?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
Thank you. I do not know whether Graeme Roy wants to add anything.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
It is also important so that Government can manage.
The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s document is important in providing a medium-term outlook on fiscal pressures. I think that we were all surprised by the pessimistic outlook on tax and the implications in that regard; there is also the potential growth in social security spending.
I want to test a bit of logic that I put to the SFC. If we take the broad assumptions—and I freely accept that we are talking about forecasts, which are liable to error—about a negative net tax position of around £355 million, coupled with additional social security spend of around £764 million, does that mean that a deficit of about a billion pounds will need to be addressed in the Scottish budget over the next four to five years?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
One of the explanations is to do with relative performance of the financial services sector in the rest of the UK compared with that in Scotland. My understanding has always been that we have a strong financial services sector in Scotland. Why would the financial services sector in Scotland be underperforming that in the rest of the UK?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
“Doldrums” might not be a technical economic term, but it is a good descriptive one.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
I think that that is relatively straightforward. We see the increase and we know what the consequentials are when it comes to health. However, if we are saying that there is, in essence, a 7 per cent cut, and we still have all that Covid cost, which extends beyond health, then there is £1 billion to £2 billion to be found in other budget lines, which is legacy Covid spend, but it is not clear where that is.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
Do you agree with that, David Eiser? Of course, the other question is whether I am looking at the right numbers here.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Daniel Johnson
My final question is about the really interesting points that Graeme Roy made about Scotland’s relative economic performance. In a sense, that is what is driving all of this, and according to the oversimplified rules of thumb in my head, I have always assumed that Scotland will do a little bit less well than London and the south-east but better than pretty much the rest of the UK. However, the analysis suggests that that is not correct any more and that we are actually trailing most of the rest of the UK.
I have also always assumed that Scotland is not that different from certain other parts of the UK, whether it be the south-west in some ways and the north-east in others. What is so particular about Scotland with regard to lower participation and slower income-tax growth?
Professor Roy, you also made an interesting point about our companies being less productive, but what is driving that? You suggested that we have not been as good at adopting technology and so on, and I wonder whether you can go into that in a bit more detail, as I find it really interesting.
