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 1354 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
It is in that portfolio because that gives us flexibility. Things will happen. I mentioned year-end audit adjustments, which are an unknown number, so we do not know where they will land. That is the whole point of having a contingency. There can still be variation in demand-led schemes. There are other issues, such as the storms perhaps triggering Bellwin payments to local authorities. There are a number of known unknowns as we go through to the end of the year.
Having that £350 million held centrally allows us the flexibility to respond to issues and allocate funds, depending on where we see demand coming through as we get towards the end of the year. Of course, any money that is left unutilised moves forward and can be spent in next year’s budget.
The answer to your question is that the money is held there because it gives us more flexibility. Of course, we do not yet know what the year-end audit adjustments will be, which is the whole point of having that contingency.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
Sorry—when you said 84 per cent, did you mean 84 per cent of the total reduction?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
Yes. I think that there have been some changes with regard to how that limit is treated.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
I suppose that the operator would need to have the capacity as well as the funding. If you need any more specific information, we will try to get the details.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
Absolutely. The nature of the programmes is that they are funded by the UK and Scottish Governments, so we need to work together on them. If there is slippage in those programmes, we work with the UK Government to reprofile that funding. Clearly, that funding is not coming in, because it is not going out to those projects as a result of slippage.
Scott, is there anything that you want to cover on the specifics of the question?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
I move,
That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Budget (Scotland) Act 2024 Amendment Regulations 2025 [draft] be approved.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
We shall supply those detailed numbers.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
We did not spend any ScotWind funds this year because we did not need to. We managed to balance the budget without doing that. That is positive, because it means that we will be able to use next year’s money for what it is intended to be used for: supporting capital and other investments that allow us to transition to a net zero economy.
A number of areas have already been identified, and the biggest part of that funding is going into offshore wind projects. Scott, do we have any specifics on when the projects will be delivered?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
There are time lags in the data because it takes a few months for things such as job offers or decisions to wash through. The process is much tighter than it has been, but, to my mind, we need to take more steps to make it even tighter.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ivan McKee
Good morning. As the committee will be aware, over the past year, persistent high inflation, the continued cost of living crisis, public sector pay deals and wider geopolitical events have created a challenging financial situation. Despite those challenges, the Scottish Government is once again on track to balance its budget. That balance has been achieved through savings and spend controls, improvements in block grant adjustments, a more favourable net tax position, incorporation of consequentials received in the United Kingdom autumn budget and other sources of funding.
The improved funding position has allowed us to remove all use of ScotWind revenues in 2024-25 to target those revenues on a range of projects that will be of longer-term benefit to Scotland. Resource borrowing has also been reduced to nil, while capital borrowing has been significantly reduced.
The spring budget revision, which sets out funding changes and final amendments to the budget for 2024-25, allocates almost £1 billion of additional funding to support our public services. It contains the usual four categories of changes. Net funding changes increase the budget by £971.3 million. Those changes include the provision of £688.5 million to health to support services and fund capital projects, £84 million to local government to fund pay deals for teaching and non-teaching staff, and additional funding for the increased Scottish welfare fund.
Alongside those allocations, £350 million of funding is being held in the finance and local government portfolio as contingency against year-end audit adjustments, movement in demand-led programmes and tax receipts, and a £60 million carry-forward to support the 2025-26 health budget. Including that funding in the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government’s portfolio, rather than leaving it unallocated, ensures that the amounts are reflected in the annual accounts, while we retain the ability to carry forward any underspend in full through the Scotland reserve. The technical, Whitehall and internal transfers are presented in the document in the usual way.
The supporting document to the spring budget revision and the finance update prepared by my officials provide further background on the net changes, as well as updates on information requested by the committee. I am happy to answer any questions.
