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 1489 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
It is quite a strange interaction, is it not? In essence, you are modelling the policies beneath the metapolicy, but you are unable to comment on the top level, from which all the consequences flow through.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
Did you look at just that one scenario rather than at multiple scenarios or potential other rules? There were—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
We have asked, but we got a kind of blancmange of a non-answer: “We are talking about what we might do about such and such around this.”
Is it not the case that the review will get pushed back until after the next election, when we will have a variation on this conversation? I think that you are being slightly generous in saying that external factors led to the cancellation of the resource spending review. It happened because there was chaos within the Government: we lost one First Minister due to horrific performance and got another one who decided to ditch the resource spending review. This committee asked the permanent secretary about the status of the resource spending review, but he had not been told, did not know and bemoaned that fact months later. It is just a mess in policy-making terms. The issue is not just about externality; it is about putting politics first, is it not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
But the Government’s decision not to publish clearly devalues it, too, does it not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
Surely, the means by which we, as a country, deal with the volatile external environment involves having a stronger north star direction and looking to find variations to help us to cope with that. Do you have any ideas for how we might strengthen the long-term process?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
It has become not even annual. In the past three years, we have had emergency in-year budget statements halfway through the year, or less than halfway through the year, when the budget has had to be reset.
I am struck by the evidence that you have both presented that, despite the external environment—including the OBR, which we have just heard from, and the SFC—producing more material about the long term and long-term trajectories, the Scottish Government’s process is becoming increasingly short term. It is month to month or week to week, rather than decade to decade. Is that a fair critique, based on the evidence that you have given us?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
That is a private conversation with the Government. Okay. That is useful.
The stated policy of the Scottish Government at the moment is to pursue full fiscal autonomy. Has the Scottish Government had any conversations with the OBR as to what the process would look like?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
My last question is about the spending review that is on-going across the UK. The departmental budgets have been laid out in the UK Government’s budget, and those departments are now being asked to decide policy priorities within that funding. Is there any reason why the Scottish Government should not be conducting a spending review along the same lines now?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
When it comes to those kinds of events and externalities, even if we set aside certain things about which the Government cannot decide what it wants to do—indeed, which it seems unable to make a decision about—it could at least, with regard to the core assumptions, underlying need and so on, set out the agenda for what is required, given the country’s demographic shape, the likely tax base and where we are headed. Given that there are always going to be events, elections and so on, we might just never publish the document.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 22 April 2025
Michael Marra
I will start where you finished, convener. A senior civil servant described to me how they spend approximately 60 per cent of their time fighting for the budget that was set in the previous December and the other 40 per cent answering freedom of information requests. That 60 per cent is an opportunity cost of not having long-term security about budgets, is it not?
