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 3539 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I get tongue-tied myself. These things happen.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I agree, as I am sure everyone else would, that certainty is important, but as the Scottish Government does not always have certainty with regard to its own funding it is difficult to pass certainty on. Do you not agree?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Other members might want to focus on that point a bit more.
With regard to the overarching priorities in the review, you mention
“Meeting child poverty targets ... Addressing climate change”
and
“Securing a stronger, fairer, greener economy”,
and then go on to say:
“There is ... very little comment ... on the data and drivers behind these three priorities”.
What data and drivers do you feel should have been included?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
That was very helpful.
In your submission, you say:
“there is no clarity on what a National Care Service will look like or deliver.”
What would you like it to look like and deliver?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Did you want to come in, Ms Rowand?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Do either of you have a ballpark figure for the additional resource required to deliver that change?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Okay—thank you. I think that other members will want to probe that point a bit further.
One of the things discussed in COSLA’s written submission, which is a real issue for the committee and has been for a long time, is the need for
“a genuine focus on preventative approaches”.
I think that is critical. You also say that,
“With ever greater levels of funding being directed toward the NHS”,
there are other ways to tackle child poverty. You mention housing, education and employment.
Surely the politics of that is a difficulty. Say, for instance, that the Government decides that you are absolutely right and it agrees 100 per cent with what you do, and that the next time it gets a Barnett consequential it will give a quarter of it directly to local government, rather than putting it all into the national health service. Surely the difficulty is that the media and Opposition politicians would then come down on the Scottish Government like a ton of bricks and denounce it for underfunding the NHS exactly at a time when there are huge waiting lists, blah, blah, blah. Surely the issue is that, while everybody knows—at least in my view—what has to be done, sometimes the politics gets in the way, given the hostility of the media. Some people might wonder whether it is worth it, in that we cannot necessarily tell the public what changes are going to be delivered over five or 10 years, as people may say that, if the Government puts money into the NHS now, they might not have to wait so long for their operation or whatever.
How do we square that circle with what we believe might deliver better in the long run? You speak about the NHS basically “fixing the problem” rather than actually “solving the problem”. How do we do that a time when we do not have a huge amount of additional resources? If there was lots of money for both local government and the NHS, we could do it, but how do we actually manage that difficult political situation?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I will now open up the session to colleagues around the table.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
When I was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, local government got a higher share of spend than the national health service, but, of course, the ageing population has largely put paid to that. A point that I would make about having a set proportion for local government or for anything else is that the Government can decide what it considers to be expenditure in that particular remit. I realise that that is the policy of at least one party, but there is always a way of getting around things.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
But that is the $64,000 question. I am sorry, but the Government sets its priorities and if people are going to ask for additional resources, it is surely incumbent on them to say where they should come from. Should they come from taxes or elsewhere in the Scottish budget?
