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 5737 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
David, do you want to come in?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
It has been a very useful evidence session. We have come to the end of it, you will be glad to know. It is helpful to hear the perspective of COSLA.
I think that Stephanie Callaghan has a supplementary question.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
We will get into some of those details now.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Katie, do you want to come in on that?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Under agenda item 2, the committee will take evidence from two panels of witnesses on the Scottish Government’s 2024-25 budget. For our first panel, we are joined online by Councillor Katie Hagmann, resources spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and we are joined in the room by Mirren Kelly, chief officer for local government finance at COSLA; and David Robertson, finance lead at the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers and chief executive of Scottish Borders Council. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting.
We will try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but if you would like to come in, please indicate as much to the clerks. Councillor Hagmann, as you are participating virtually, you can do that by typing R in the chat function.
I will direct my first question to Councillor Hagmann initially. The Deputy First Minister told the Parliament that the 2024-25 revenue settlement represents a 5 per cent real-terms increase on last year’s budget. However, COSLA has stated that the settlement is actually a £62.7 million reduction over the year. The committee is interested in understanding how COSLA arrived at that figure and why it appears to be so different from the Scottish Government’s interpretation. At a meeting last year, we heard from the directors of finance that the provisional 2024-25 budget allocation should be compared against the final budget figures for 2023-24.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thanks very much. That experience at local authority level is why you ask such good questions.
I just want to note that we had quite a lot of food metaphors this morning, so we have had a cake and apples while we have been busy with all those numbers. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. [Interruption.] I have just been reminded that we also had pizza—I forgot about that one.
I briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses.
10:23 Meeting suspended.Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
On our second panel, we are joined by Joe FitzPatrick, the Minister for Local Government Empowerment and Planning, and, from the Scottish Government, by Ian Storrie, who is the head of local government finance, and David Cowan, who is the head of regeneration and place.
I welcome you all to the meeting and invite Mr FitzPatrick to make a short opening statement.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Do you have anything to add, David?
09:15Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Thank you for coming along to give evidence, minister. I thank Ian Storrie, too; it was helpful to get the background and to hear about the process involved in the fiscal framework and the complexity that you have come up against over the months in which you have tried to develop it. There is a sense that, this time next year, we will—we hope—be in a different position.
Given that, at the start of the meeting, we agreed to take the next two items in private, I now close the public part of the meeting.
11:27 Meeting continued in private until 12:04.Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Ariane Burgess
Okay. David Robertson, do you have anything to add?