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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 3573 contributions
|
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
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
I get tongue-tied myself. These things happen.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
If there are additional resource implications, one would expect that to be funded from core budgets. I am sure that you would agree that the Government does not want to undertake structural change for the sake of it. COSLA may not agree with all aspects of the proposals, but I am sure that it would agree that the reason for the Government’s measures is to improve the service overall in the long run. The Government may even be of the view that, while there may be short-term disruption, it might be worth it for long-term improvements. Is that not the view that it has, and is that not why it is going down that road? Why else would the Government be doing that if it did not believe that the measures would bring improvements in the long run for the people who require the services?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
One of the difficulties is having to disinvest from areas that are, perhaps, not so effective and switch resource. At a time when resources are not increasing, difficult choices have to be made.
I have one final question, which is about how priorities link in with the national performance framework. The submission from COSLA says:
“There needs to be an improved mechanism for assessing how we are reaching the National Performance Framework goals.”
What could, or should that mechanism look like?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Yesterday, I visited a social enterprise in my constituency, which echoed more or less exactly what you are saying.
About 22 years ago, when I was a member of the Social Justice Committee, we had an inquiry into the voluntary sector, and one of the issues that was raised during that was the problem of “initiative-itis”, whereby funding is provided for new initiatives for one to three years, and, by the third year, the staff of the project end up very nervous about whether the project will survive and spend their time wondering whether they will have to get another job and looking for other pots of funding. Often, good projects are established but are then discontinued. It seems that the situation has not necessarily changed as much as it should have done in the subsequent two decades. Is the SCVO concerned that there is perhaps an emphasis on the new rather than on things that have been proven to work and deliver on the ground?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
That is a fundamentally important point. Given that we are in a time of financial challenge, I am not convinced that there will be significant additional funding—let us be realistic about it. However, if the money can be spent more effectively and efficiently, that would be good. I can only imagine how difficult it is for staff—wondering every year whether they will have job after the end of the financial year and having to wait months for the processes to work through. The situation really is unacceptable, so we must address it.
The Scottish Property Foundation’s submission says that
“resources should be directed towards areas of government dedicated to supporting economic development.”
I will put to you the question that I put to Mr Sim earlier. How much additional resource do you believe should be put into that, and where should it be funded from?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you, Liz—your timing was absolutely perfect to the second.
I thank our witnesses for their very helpful evidence. As we have concluded our questions, I suspend the meeting until 10.45 for a break.
10:35 Meeting suspended.10:45 On resuming—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
It is very helpful for you to put a sum on what you would require. In your paper, you noted:
“That capital review projects further real terms erosion of support for research and innovation over the coming years.”
The Scottish Government had a 9.7 per cent real-terms reduction in its capital grant allocation. How can you ask for additional funding in capital when the only way that the Scottish Government can meet its capital requirements at a time of high inflation is to borrow additionally, almost up to its limit?
