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 1690 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
It is not exactly burdensome to learn someone’s sex.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
Okay—thank you very much.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
To finish off this point, I have a question for all the witnesses. Within the limitations of the Scottish Government’s powers, where do you see the biggest bang for buck in terms of increasing productivity? Professor Ruane, you have conceded that you are not as across all the limitations, so perhaps Dr Brewer or Professor Muscatelli can take that question.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
I accept what you are saying because it might well mean that more housing is available at the bottom of the ladder. However, that is only if people can get the funding for it, which links into the wider economic environment.
A lot of stuff that I was going to ask about has been covered, so I will turn to the letter that you sent to the convener, Professor Roy. My question concerns sex and gender data for child disability payments. It would be useful to refresh our memory. My recollection—you can tell me if I am wrong—is that the data that is now being collected as part of the equality monitoring form is on gender, and that the equality monitoring form could be filled in by somebody else because it is being filled in on behalf of a child. Is that right?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, everybody, and thank you for coming along. I return to questions on modelling behaviours and elasticity, which we have talked about in relation to income tax.
I would like to get your sense of how that has been factored in with regard to ADS, which I think you said in your opening remarks is increasing from 4 to 6 per cent and is estimated to give £34 million extra. Arguably, this is even more complex because of the reasons that you set out before, and it is a newer tax as well.
What level of confidence do you have in that £34 million figure, given the range of factors, which you should feel free to outline? I have merely given my view.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
I remember that you called it out.
Professor Breedon, you keep raising your eyebrow, so you look as though you want to come in with a last comment.
11:45Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
There are multiple further questions, but I will leave them just now, in the interests of time.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
My question is for Professor Chadha and it picks up on the Brexit point. I am on the Finance and Public Administration Committee and we had representatives of the Office for Budget Responsibility in yesterday. The OBR commented on Brexit in its economic and fiscal outlook report of November 2022, in which it said that Brexit had had “a significant adverse impact”, and it quoted various statistics about trade volumes falling 8.3 per cent below the present level by quarter 4 of 2023.
The OBR also made an interesting comment about trade intensity being
“15 per cent lower ... than if the UK had remained in the EU.”
Trade intensity is a measure of a country’s interaction with the world economy. I asked what the outlook was for that to continue, and they said that they anticipate that that will continue for at least another 15 years, despite the trade deals that have been done. Are you aware of those figures, and do you have any further reflections on the outlook as outlined in the OBR’s comments to committee yesterday?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Scotland’s Economic Outlook
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
Because I am aware of the time—and I appreciate the witnesses giving up their time—I will direct my final question to Professor Chadha only.
In talking about uncertainty, we talked about how to disaggregate data—Emma Congreve touched on that. Arguably, however, the past is a good predictor of the future. Given that the session is an overview of the current macroeconomic climate, it is worth pointing out some of the statistics about the UK. In 1999, only four of the 12 small advanced economies had a GDP per capita higher than the UK; by 2019, the figure was 11 out of 12. Even since the economic crisis, if the UK had matched the economic growth rates of other large economies, its economy would have been 4.4 per cent larger; if it had matched the growth rates of small advanced economies, its economy would have been 7.7 percent larger. We have considerable certainty, because we can look at the past.
Given those economic stats, to what extent can we be certain of continued decline—if the past is a good predictor of the future—and to what extent is our economy a “hipster” economy or otherwise?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24 (United Kingdom Context)
Meeting date: 13 December 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for putting that on the record. I commented at the beginning that we had talked about that issue, and I understand and appreciate the difficulty in disaggregating data on the impact of Covid, the pandemic and Ukraine.
That said, we are now able to predict with slightly more certainty the impact of Brexit over the long term. Do you think that that issue is being talked about enough? Obviously, I have read your November report, but the issue keeps disappearing as though it is not going to have any long-term impact when, according to your figures, it quite clearly will have.
