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 909 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kate Forbes
The £145 million is part of the £440 million. We have used the £440 million for business support and the self-isolation support grants.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kate Forbes
Because a little additional funding from sources such as VisitScotland was factored in, the operating figure that we could allocate for economic recovery is £103 million.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kate Forbes
All parties came forward with additional requests for funding. They can correct me live on air as to whether they suggested areas where funding should be reduced, but I do not recall hearing about those. All the spending asks were substantial. I did not disagree with all of them—we would all like to see increased spending. In our engagement, there were areas where other parties would like to see us to spend more, but I do not know where the funding would come from.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kate Forbes
I think that Jackie Baillie is referring to last year when, for example, social care was fully costed as being in the region of between £1.5 billion and £2 billion.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kate Forbes
The options fees will reflect the market’s willingness to compete. England and Wales had an open auction and projects in England and Wales are generally in shallower water and off the coast. We need to factor in that Scottish conditions are far more challenging, so projects are costlier to develop. They are often further out to sea, in deeper waters and will probably require the deployment of floating technology, which is still at an early stagee of development, and there are higher grid connection costs, so they are relatively more expensive to develop. All those additional costs have been factored in, not by me but by the developers who are bidding for those sites.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kate Forbes
Amendment 1 increases the social justice, housing and local government portfolio authorisation in schedule 1 to the bill by £120 million. Amendment 2 increases the total amount of resources of the Scottish Administration in schedule 1 to take account of that additional £120 million. Amendment 3 increases the overall cash authorisation for the Scottish Administration under section 4(2) of the bill by £120 million. In other words, these amendments give us the authorisation to draw down cash and the authority to spend it.
I move amendment 1.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Amendment 2 moved—[Kate Forbes]—and agreed to.
Schedule 1, as amended, agreed to.
Section 2 agreed to.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Section 3 agreed to.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Section 4—Overall cash authorisations
Amendment 3 moved—[Kate Forbes]—and agreed to.
Section 4, as amended, agreed to.
Sections 5 to 11 agreed to.
Long title agreed to.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kate Forbes
I clarify that quite a lot of the £440 million was already factored into budgets. For example, it includes funding that we identified for next year’s budget but has been paid in this year’s budget. It is a complex picture, and it is difficult to draw a line directly from the £440 million.
It is hard to say at this point, in advance of supplementary estimates, but I envisage—I can be corrected on this—that additional consequentials will be generated in health and social care. I mention that as a caveat. Additional funding that is generated by there being more spending south of the border is likely to come from health. An element might come from transport, because the UK Government has invested in transport, which has been affected over the past few weeks, in the same way that we have. That is my understanding.
We have the conversation about baselining every year. I hope that the way to get away from that conversation is through the resource spending review. However, I have heard the calls from local government. I do not know whether Ian Storrie has anything to add on local government finance, but I note that the £120 million is not ring fenced, so it can be spent on what local government determines. Things including national insurance contributions will need, technically, to be paid year on year, and pay will need to be paid year on year. I am very conscious of rolling budgets. I do not want to pre-empt next year’s budget, but I sincerely hope that we will, through the resource spending review of what local government actually needs, be in a better position well in advance of that, and that we will not still be having this groundhog day discussion about whether things are baselined.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Kate Forbes
Daniel Johnson asks a good question and has already explained why that is not identified separately: it is all part of the overall block grant.
I do not think that a lot of the Covid-related spend can be, in Mr Johnson’s words, “switched off” in the short term. We can take the recovery work that is going on in justice as an example. There is a backlog of cases, some of them hugely challenging. While the courts are dealing with that backlog, new cases come forward all the time. It will be challenging to work through a backlog that keeps increasing. I cannot see that being “switched off”, as Daniel Johnson put it, in the short term. Those working on the justice portfolio have a good grasp of what is required in order to get through that backlog. I have had conversations with the Lord Advocate, the Lord President and the cabinet secretary Keith Brown about that.
Recovery will take some time if we want to see better outcomes at the end of that work. We are now in a situation where Covid-related funding is not exceptional or a one-off. It is not about emergency, one-off, grants whereby we can clearly determine that that spending is a result of something like omicron. Covid-related funding has become business as usual for many portfolios.
To go back to the resource spending review, multiyear spending must be affordable. That is a challenge. Going back to Ross Greer’s question, there are difficult decisions ahead. The spending envelope is not getting any bigger to accommodate the additional Covid-related spend, so we must become better at ensuring that our funding delivers the right outcomes.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Kate Forbes
The overall responsibility falls within my budget, but the primary ministers who are responsible are Jamie Hepburn, who is responsible for skills, and Richard Lochhead, who is looking at fair work elements. They work together quite closely.
On budget lines, that is a really good point. I could go through the list, mentioning the national transition training fund, the no one left behind scheme and so on, and tell you about all the different things that the public sector is doing and where I am spending money, but you are asking where employers are spending money—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Kate Forbes
I have two points to make about that. The first is that Registers of Scotland received significant Covid consequential funding this year. As part of the more than £639 million of Covid consequential funding, Registers of Scotland got—if I remember correctly—£14 million. If I am incorrect about that, I will get back to you.
Secondly, Registers of Scotland got substantial financial support because, of course, it raises income. I have been assured that it can still deliver its services within the budget that has been allocated.