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 2287 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
I used to work in a pensions company, so I am with you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
So, it is policy driven—I understand that. You are correct that the amalgamation of health and social care has been a wish for a long time. However, that different approach has clearly introduced significant other risks, even with apportioning or estimating costs up front. The ranges that you have set out are very wide.
Let me put it this way: if it was your personal money, you would not be risking it. How will you mitigate the risk of there being significant cost overruns in a multitude of areas? My colleagues have mentioned issues with VAT, defined benefit pensions, assets, staff, double running, IT and even uncertainty about the governance of boards. Each one of those issues would introduce additional costs. How will you mitigate the risks in the process that you have adopted?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
You make a point that reflects my personal experience, which is that a programme plan is only ever accurate after the programme has finished. That is the standard issue and risk for all the spend. What you are describing makes that more likely, rather than less likely. You are talking about the business cases in the areas that you mentioned earlier, but only at that point will we start, from a financial perspective, to get a sense of the risks to the public purse. There are concerns about parliamentary scrutiny, on which I absolutely back up what my colleague, Mr Mason, said.
I looked in the financial memorandum specifically for the word “risk”. It is mentioned only twice. However, this is screaming out that there are huge risks, to me. It might be that you are under pressure in terms of timescales in which to deliver, but from my perspective of financial scrutiny, I am seeing a blank cheque. That is deeply worrying in respect of the public purse.
If you had had a choice, would you have produced that financial memorandum or would you have wanted more detail and further breakdowns based on the policy provisions? Were you pushed to bring forward the financial memorandum?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
Good morning. I read all your submissions with great interest, and I share your concerns about some of the issues that have already been touched on around VAT, pensions, assets, governance and so on. In the previous evidence session, I added in some of my own concerns. However, in the interests of giving every panel an equally hard time, I want to ask you some questions.
Any change that removes or is perceived to remove responsibilities is always resisted by the affected body. To what extent are you simply resistant to change and protecting your own turf, if you like?
Sarah Watters smiled, so she can go first.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
When do you anticipate baselining your estimated costs, so that you can nail your colours to the mast a bit more? At what point will that occur?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
To build on that, we talked earlier about economies of scale. I think that Paul Manning mentioned the loss of economies of scale to local government. However, a corollary of that is the benefit of economies of scale to the Scottish Government. I want to ask about that because, all the way through this session, we have commented on public sector funding and our being in a precarious position, and we do that continually.
What specific economies of scale can you see with at least some of the proposals for the Scottish Government and therefore the public purse? It strikes me—I have put this on the record before—that having 32 local authorities with duplicate functions across the board is not necessarily the most efficient way of working. I am interested in your thoughts about where the economies of scale are for the Scottish Government rather than the disbenefit of economies of scale for you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
The financial memorandum does not mention economies of scale.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
Does Sharon Wearing want to answer either of my questions?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Michelle Thomson
My last question is on the process and the production of the financial memorandum. It has to be produced alongside the bill—that is a matter of process in the Parliament. However, it strikes me that we are talking about a very large bill. Somebody referred to colleges earlier; I imagine that there were similar issues with them. The issue is absolutely huge, and I cannot see how a financial memorandum can be produced at this point in time with any degree of accuracy whatsoever, when there are still huge questions about the requirements and the enactment.
During the earlier panel session, I asked how we as a committee will ensure that there is adequate financial scrutiny. That is our primary purpose. I got back the assurance that the resultant business cases, which would contain risk assessments, would be brought forward to us. My question to you, from the other side, is whether that will be adequate. I think that we all agree that there are significant gaps in the financial memorandum as it stands. From a financial scrutiny perspective, will the process in the financial memorandum work for something of that scale?
