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 917 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Craig Hoy
I go back to the original comment from Shona Robison about the floor. What more could be done so that the negotiations are more transparent and perhaps to take the heat out of them, so that the Government can be a bit more honest with you about what it can and cannot afford?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Craig Hoy
In your submission, you say:
“Politicians need to recognise the impact of public sector wage restraint following a decade of austerity, and that wages in the public sector will need to keep pace with private sector wage growth if we are to recruit and retain skilled workers.”
By contrast, the Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that
“We do not find any evidence that larger increases in public sector pay in Scotland in recent years have boosted the retention of public sector workers.”
What is the point of higher pay for higher-earning civil servants? Is it to retain them or is it simply that that is the culture that now persists within those roles and functions?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Craig Hoy
Finally, has the Scottish Government tied one hand behind its back at the negotiating table by entering into discussions with a presumption that it will not countenance strike action?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Craig Hoy
Dave, I would like to extend the convener’s line of questioning. When Shona Robison appeared before the committee, she made the point that one of the reasons that the Scottish Government has not been transparent or forthcoming about public sector pay is that, if it put a number out there, that number would become the floor and the unions would always negotiate up. Is there an issue now with both sides not necessarily entering into these discussions in good faith? If the Government comes to you and says, “It is 9 per cent over three years or we are going to have to make cuts to front-line services,” should you not be taking that at face value and then working out how you apportion that annualised 3 per cent, rather than—as the recent data shows—public sector wage growth continuing to exceed wage growth not just in the rest of the UK but in the private sector?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Craig Hoy
I have a question about the ecosystem of bodies that could hold the Scottish Government accountable and could push for greater transparency. Is there not an inherent contradiction here in that many of those organisations are either directly or indirectly funded by the Scottish Government? For example, the Scottish Women’s Budget Group is partly funded, I think, by the Scottish Government through Inspiring Scotland or directly. Is there an issue that the ecosystem of bodies in Scotland, which we now call civic society, is, in many respects, funded by the Scottish Government? On whether you are open, honest and critical with the Scottish Government, do you sometimes perhaps pull your punches because you rely on the Scottish budget for funding?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Craig Hoy
There is a presumption that it will not countenance strike action. The Government has made a virtue of the fact that there have been no large-scale public sector strikes in Scotland. Does that give you the whip hand at the negotiating table?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Craig Hoy
Although above-inflation wage growth for those at the lower end of the spectrum would probably gather public support, there is an increasing focus on the higher levels of the civil service—bands A to C, for example—for which unions negotiate with the Scottish Government. Should we be starting to be more prescriptive or granular when we talk about public sector pay? There are some public sector workers who are now earning considerably more than their counterparts in the private sector and who also benefit from better pension arrangements. Should the trade union movement perhaps be a little bit more up front with the public about who you are talking about? There are high-earning workers in the public sector who are getting significant pay increases.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Craig Hoy
Has any mandarin or senior minister explained to you why Scotland now needs three times more senior civil servants than it needed in 2016?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Craig Hoy
Super. Thanks very much.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
Craig Hoy
Pejoratively, I would say that the Government makes it up as it goes along.
You have called for the medium-term financial strategy to have a greater focus on how the funding gap will be closed. If the Government does not focus on that, where will we end up in two, five or 10 years’ time?
