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 1501 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
As I said, the Scottish Funding Council is in the process of producing the academic year 2024-25 indicative allocations for both colleges and universities—last year it produced those in the spring—which will provide the detail that you are looking for about funded university places. That is expected in the spring of this year, as it was in the spring of last year.
During the last session, we spent a lot of time talking about the 1,200 places for universities that—as Universities Scotland has been very clear—were Covid additional places and were never envisaged to be there for the long term. It always knew that those places would be reduced, and the timeframe for that was always very clear. We will allow the Scottish Funding Council to get on with the job that it does every year.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
That is how it works.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
The Scottish Funding Council will discuss the number of places with colleges and universities, which will be within the overall budget that has been allocated to colleges and universities, but you are asking me about additional money in an environment—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
—in relation to the programme for international student assessment results.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
As I have said, the Scottish Funding Council will have discussions with both sets of institutions about the number of places. The overall budget that has been set is the overall environment that the Scottish Funding Council will be operating in. That budget has already been set out. The figure is there, and that is the context within which the SFC will operate when it comes to those institutions. As I said, as was the case last year, the spring will be when those places will be agreed with both sets of institutions.
It is a very challenging financial environment. It would have been more challenging if the tax decisions that we have made had not been made. You have alluded to the fact that you are against the tax rises and you have said that you would want to cut the intermediate rate of tax, all of which would lead us to having £0.5 billion less money for universities, colleges, health and local government. You cannot talk only about the tax side of things; you have to also address the spend side of the budget in relation to the decisions that you are saying that you would take.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
I might bring in Alison Cumming here, but this is not about taking that money and spending it elsewhere in the budget—the money has been constrained, so there is less money. The money is being profiled and deployed in a way that is required by the sector but which is also affordable. There is no point in £61 million sitting in a budget line that will not be spent or which will be underspent if it means that we have to reduce funding elsewhere to provide it in a particular area—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
As I have said, we await the spring budget. Of course, the best way of addressing your point about new NHS facilities is for the chancellor to reverse the capital cut and not have £1.6 billion—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
Steven Heddle was one of the commentators at that meeting, and despite the difficulties—do not get me wrong; the meetings can of course be robust—he pointed out that there are important areas that councils want to work with us on and that the Verity house agreement is really important to them.
I can look back to many budget discussions with local government and they do take a bit of a pattern. Local government will ask for X amount of money, there will be some difficult discussions, and then we land where we land. This year is difficult. We could say that it is difficult for the whole of the public sector because there is less money.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
Well, I gave the global amount for higher and further education. If you are asking me whether the Scottish Funding Council has reached an agreement on places with universities and colleges, my understanding is that those discussions are on-going.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Shona Robison
Let me say a couple of things about that. Clearly, Parliament has taken a lot of interest in closing the poverty-related attainment gap, and it is our firm belief that teachers play a crucial role in our ability to do that. We are investing £1 billion in the Scottish attainment challenge in the current session of Parliament, and we recognise that the teacher workforce is at the heart of that. However, there are other important supports that are provided through schools and other agencies.
You make the point that the position on teacher numbers is not universal across Scotland. What do we do about that? The offer to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has been the education assurance board. We would like to get to what we could describe as a single point of truth on what the teaching workforce needs to look like over the next few years in order for us to get to numbers that more accurately reflect the fact that there are differing positions. The numbers are growing in some areas. Overall, the pupil roll has increased by more than 30,000 over the past decade, so it is not true to say that the overall position is down. However, there is variation across the country.
Establishing that board and being able to look at the actual workforce numbers that are required will enable us to align more closely with what is required in order to maintain teacher numbers in the right areas. That is the key missing bit for us. That board needs to be established and that work needs to be taken forward.
