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 2256 contributions
Economy and Fair Work Committee (Virtual)
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
How have we ended up in the position in which the bill will go through its second reading later this month—next week, I think—yet we still do not have the necessary level of definition? It is possible that the bill could go all the way through and, under what is proposed at the moment, it will be left to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to make the decisions. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but the bill seems to have the potential for bypassing ministers in the UK Government, never mind the Scottish Parliament, altogether. How on earth have we ended up in this position?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
To ask the Scottish Government in what ways the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 could impact on its ability to meet its net zero targets. (S6O-00601)
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
At today’s Economy and Fair Work Committee, it became clear that the 2020 act acts as an enabler for a raft of other legislation—for example, the UK Parliament Subsidy Control Bill is one area of concern. Professor David Bell of the University of Stirling noted in his submission to the committee that
“It is also not clear how the Bill might interact with policies that are intended to move the economy towards net zero. For example, if the Scottish government proposed to subsidise industrial plants to reduces their carbon footprints, would it be forced by the Secretary of State (BEIS) to request a CMA assessment of this action.”
To what extent does the cabinet secretary share the concerns of Professor David Bell?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
I can see that David Phillips wants to come in. He has put an R in the chat box.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
I have a question for all three of the Davids, but perhaps Professor David Bell could start. We have focused on Scotland and Wales, but I am interested in what helpful precedents operate elsewhere in the world, particularly those that deal with issues around fiscal transfers and divergence over time. I feel as though we are dancing on the head of a pin, particularly in relation to indexation methods, and some of those problems are not unique. I would appreciate some thoughts from Professor Bell on that in relation to the review.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
[Inaudible.]—and everybody for the barking that came out of nowhere.
Thank you for that, Ed. Do you have anything to add, Guto? That is my only question.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for that—although my question was actually about what the limitations of the current arrangements are, rather than the benefits. Perhaps you would like to fill in on that. What are the limitations of the fiscal levers that the Scottish Government has in influencing the tax base? That was my question.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for mentioning those fundamentals.
I will let you move on now, convener.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
Earlier, we talked about how one could grow the tax base—in other words, the working-age population—in Scotland. Daniel Johnson mentioned that, the committee has talked about it a great deal, and I would like to understand the issue a bit more.
Professor Bell, in your view, what are the limitations on the fiscal levers that the Scottish Government currently has to influence and grow the tax base, regardless of the indexation method? Of course, we are really looking at the working-age population. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on the current limitations in the area that we are discussing.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Michelle Thomson
To what extent does the Barnett formula embed structural imbalances in the UK? You mentioned financial services, which is an industry that I was involved in for many years. Over the course of my career, head office functions moved to London, bar a few noteworthy examples such as Standard Life, although things have changed for it as well.