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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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
That is a helpful clarification.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
You went quiet there, but that is fine. I will ask a further question.
We recently had an interesting—it was certainly interesting for us—conference on taxation, which was held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. If we are going to reform council tax and non-domestic rates, I would want them to be reformed hand in hand. They are both property-based taxes, but they have diverged significantly and council tax was only ever a temporary fix. Would you want to reform them hand in hand? Would they both need to be based on the same underlying principles—that is, if you went for a land value tax for one, you would do the same for the other—or could you have a property-based tax for residential taxation and a land value tax for commercial? Does it need to be done in the round and do we need a consistent approach to commercial and residential taxation?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
I want to follow up on the convener’s question about the interaction between public sector pay policy and social security. The point around pay was clear.
To what degree do you model the long-term economic impacts of social security spend? That is not pure cost; it can stimulate demand. Indeed, unemployment benefits are referred to as stabilisers. We need to look at the increased proportion of spend on social security. To what degree is that—I apologise if I am getting my economics terminology wrong—wider or external economic impact modelled in your work?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
That takes us into the overall points about transparency. It strikes me that, having highlighted the £1.5 billion medium-term shortfall, the key question is what the overall balance of spend should be. Over the medium term, we are talking about a reduction in the share that local government gets and an increase in the share for health. Where in that blend does social security fit in? Should the Government be looking explicitly at that balance and stating clearly what it is? To what degree should that feed into the budget process?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
You say that, but the Scottish child payment is flat from last year. It is not being increased—in fact, there will be a real-terms decrease, will there not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
That was last year.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
I have a final question. One of the things that might make a significant difference to this year’s budget and to budgets in future years is the spending on the creation of a national care service. However, none of us can identify whether such spending is included in this budget. There is a broad statement and narrative about support being provided. Should the Government provide that clarity?
Does that not also highlight a broader issue relating to transparency? Do the witnesses agree with the Scottish Fiscal Commission that the budget should be stated according to classification of the functions of government—COFOG—principles? Audit Scotland has also made the point that policy commitments should be made much clearer in the budget. What are the witnesses’ reactions to those observations?
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2023-24
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
I have just one final question and I am afraid that it is a bit of a cheeky one, to be honest. I could not help but note on page 22 what looks awfully like a rate card to me. What is your target number of chargeable hours per year for a chargeable person, for a whole-time equivalent? I know that, even if it is not expressed in those terms, that issue will be at the forefront of your minds when you are constructing rate cards.
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2023-24
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
My question is not about individual firms and your comparison to them, but to the profession as a whole. Given that it is a regulated profession and that there are industry bodies, I assume that industry-wide salary surveys are carried out. Do you use those and do you undertake a formal benchmarking process? If so, could you set out how that operates?
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2023-24
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Daniel Johnson
There are obviously benchmarks. I could not find the most recent figures, but the previous year that Hays produced was, I think, 3 per cent. It would be useful to understand where Audit Scotland stands on that and, indeed, your rationale for when you step away, which is ultimately the purpose of a benchmarking exercise.
