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 4176 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been quite excoriating in its critique of the UK budget, and I noticed that one of the comments was that
“A crucial ingredient in this year’s policy decisions has been the way in which OBR forecasts appear to have driven policy.”
You touched on that a wee bit in response to Michelle Thomson’s questions, but what can and should the UK and Scottish Governments do differently in terms of fiscal policy? There has been a lot of critique—given your role, I understand that—but do you have more positive suggestions for how we can make things better?
11:15Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
What should Scotland’s spending priorities be, given what Daniel Johnson said about there being a jump in resources this year, but a real-terms decline in the following two years? Sustainability of the public finances is, obviously, a major issue for us in Scotland.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
One issue is that the OBR does not necessarily have access to the data that it requires to look at specifically Scottish circumstances. Are there any data streams that could be added to make forecasting in a Scottish context more accurate?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Paul Johnson says that the
“primacy of asset accumulation, and the importance of asset holdings”
has been prioritised over improving living standards through earnings, which will impact on low-income households in particular. Is it fair to say that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Good morning and welcome to the 13th meeting in 2021 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.
The first item on our agenda is to take evidence from the Office for Budget Responsibility as part of our budget scrutiny. We are joined by Richard Hughes, director, and Professor Sir Charlie Bean and Andy King, budget responsibility committee members. It is the first time that we have taken evidence from the OBR this session, and I thank Mr Hughes and his colleagues for making the journey to Edinburgh.
We have 75 minutes for discussion and will have to finish promptly just before 10.30 am, in time for our second evidence session.
As we have been given a small but perfectly formed statement by the OBR, I will open up the questions. I do not mind who answers the questions—that is a matter for the witnesses, and one or more can answer.
In the third paragraph of your overview of the October 2021 economic and fiscal outlook, published on 27 October, you stated that there are
“supply constraints in several markets.”
You go on to say that
“these supply bottlenecks have been exacerbated by changes in the migration and trading regimes following Brexit”,
and you
“expect CPI inflation to reach 4.4 per cent next year”.
What is your view on how the consumer prices index will impact the Treasury gross domestic product deflator, which is obviously important for the setting of budgets in Scotland? Is the situation with supply bottlenecks improving, and when do you expect it to return to as near normal as possible?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I will stick with inflation. No one has answered the question about CPI versus the Treasury deflator yet. I was struck by the difference between the OBR’s assumed nominal earnings growth in 2022 of around 3.9 per cent and the 1.3 per cent that is in the Bank of England’s monetary report. That is a huge differential. Most people would probably think that the OBR is nearer the mark on that. From your perspective, do you think that the Bank of England will look again at that, and will there be implications for interest rates? We know that the bank voted seven to two against changing the interest rate last month. What is your feeling about that, and how will it impact on your forecasts?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Is it not the case that, if people are incentivised to invest in assets, they are less likely to invest in the productive elements of the economy that are high risk, which impacts on productivity and growth?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
Inflation is leading to fiscal drag, which is a windfall for the chancellor. What is the impact on middle-income earners in particular?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
I have one more question before I open it out to colleagues. In his speech, Paul Johnson said that, over the period since 2010,
“health spending will have increased by over 40%, education spending by less than 3%.”
That relates to south of the border, and implies a remarkable lack of priority afforded to the education system, with
“spending per student in FE and sixth form colleges”
remaining
“well below 2010 levels.”
He goes on to say:
“This is not a set of priorities which looks consistent with a long term growth strategy.”
What has been the impact on growth of those education policies over the past decade or so?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Kenneth Gibson
For our second budget scrutiny evidence-taking session, we are joined remotely by Carl Emmerson, the deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Mr Emmerson is standing in for the director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, who is unwell—we wish him a swift recovery. I thank Mr Emmerson for making himself available to give evidence at short notice and welcome him to the meeting.
I remind members that our broadcasting team will operate their microphones, so they should not touch them. We have an hour for this evidence-taking session, so it would be helpful if members could keep their questions concise.
I invite Mr Emmerson to make a short opening statement.
