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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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
We are using the money that is generated from ScotWind to support the budget. Where we end up on the path to balance for 2023-24 will determine how much of the ScotWind moneys that are generated are able to be deployed in 2024-25. The ScotWind resource has proven to be a really important resource in supporting the budget. At the moment, I am not able to tell you how much of that will be able to be utilised for 2024-25, because that will be largely dependent on how much we need to draw down in 2023-24 for our path to balance. Once I know that, after we have had the supplementary estimates and the spring budget, I will be able to inform the committee how much will be available for drawdown in 2024-25, if that would be helpful.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
ScotWind moneys have been used to support the budget. In terms of the path to balance for 2023-24, we have to ensure that we can balance our budget, which we are legally required to do at the year end. Although I set out some of the in-year savings, because of the volatility of the budget and the fact that pay deals are beyond what was budgeted for, there is still a way to go in terms of the path to balance for 2023-24.
I want to minimise any drawdown of ScotWind, because the more we draw down in 2023-24, the less is available for 2024-25. I had set out in the medium-term financial strategy last May that we had anticipated having £350 million available to us in 2024-25 to support the budget. Any money that I need to use in 2023-24 to support achieving a balanced budget is money that is not available for 2024-25. You can see why we want to ensure that we minimise any usage—that £350 million, or whatever we end up being able to draw down for 2024-25, is an essential part of the budget to support public services.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
I will hand over to Neil Gray on that question. There are quite a lot of complexities in looking to the future beyond ScotWind, but I will let Neil answer on that.
On your fundamental point about tackling fuel poverty and making sure that the measures that are taken to tackle climate change are not exacerbating inequalities, I am very mindful of the discussions with the housing sector about moving to net zero. Heating systems have to be done in a way—this is a red line for us, as a Government—that does not push more people into fuel poverty because the systems are more expensive to run. We have to make sure, in every step that we take, that we are mindful of those who could benefit most if we get it right, but who could also be at risk if we do not get it right. Heating systems are one example.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
Yes.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
As a basic answer to your question I will say that those are matters for negotiations, but it is important to me that Crown Estate Scotland can continue to do the good job that it is doing.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
I will kick off. As I have touched on, the joint budget review was to take forward three strands of work. The first strand was to have a dedicated climate narrative in the budget document—which we have done. The second strand was to enhance the categorisation that we talked about earlier, which we have also done, although it is a work in progress.
The third strand was to develop and implement a Scottish Government-wide net zero assessment. That could be described as an iterative process, with the intention being to roll it out across the wider Scottish Government from late 2024. Following roll-out, there will be a review to ensure that it is fit for purpose.
That is about selecting a broad range of policies from across the Scottish Government to pilot the methodology and go further than we have so far. The benefit of that will be that we will be able to look at policies as they develop and check whether they are impacting positively and in the way that they need to, so that we meet our climate change goals. Once completed, the three strands will have taken us to a better place.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
There will be work in progress to ensure—as we go forward and are able to compare budget to budget, for example—that we are able to provide more monitoring of whether we are making the improvements that we need to make. The new methodology evaluates each spending line on its potential impact, either on emissions or adaptation.
The capital and financial transactions funding position for 2024-25 is £6.4 billion, and it apportions around 42 per cent of spend to positive activities in absolute terms; that means around £2.7 billion for positive spend for climate. There is a lot that would be described as being in the neutral space. The resource budget is £36 billion for 2024-25.
Clearly, most of that spend is on front-line services including the NHS, social security, local government and so on. Seventy-five per cent of the total resource budget is categorised as neutral spend, so it is not having a negative impact on climate, but neither is it having a positive impact. It is important to make that point when we bring in the resource budget. The bulk of it is going on staffing, which will not have a positive or a negative impact. The resource side of things will have a minimal carbon impact.
As this is the first year, there is potential for improvements to be made to the evidence base that is used to assess impact. We see this as the start of a process, not the end of the journey. Perhaps after the experience of this budget, the committee might be happy to revisit it to see where we might make further improvements.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
There will be such information in the evidence base on what makes the biggest impact. That is where we get into quite difficult decision making, because if there is an array of things that make an impact to some extent, but there is only a certain amount of money to deploy, we then have to make judgments about where the biggest impact will be at this moment in time. That does not mean that we will not revisit it. Philip Raines’s point was that the budget trajectory is not a straight line. There will be peaks and troughs, but the destination is the planting of more trees and meeting the targets. In years when there are big real challenges, we sometimes have to prioritise other areas.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
Neil Gray may want to—
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 23 January 2024
Shona Robison
I guess that I could not say, hand on heart, that it will all be fully functioning across every line and policy decision by the time of the next budget. It probably will not be, because it is complex, but we are on a journey that is about all the stages, including the policy development stage as well as the negotiations to agree policy and the amount of money that we are going to spend on it. When we are looking at policy, we need to embed analysis of the impact on net zero from the start and be able to set it out.
