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 1492 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Ross Greer
My first question is on sequencing. I entirely understand the point that you made in your opening remarks about what Parliament’s standing orders require you to lay out in a financial memorandum, and I appreciate your comment about not pre-empting the result of co-design processes. However, for me, that raises the obvious—if perhaps daft laddie—question of why we did not go through the co-design process before we reached this stage of the parliamentary process.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Ross Greer
I appreciate that, as you have said and as we would all expect, you are engaged in discussions with the UK Government on achieving VAT neutrality, but surely, until those discussions reach what we hope is a positive conclusion, the default position is that there will be VAT liability. If that is the status quo at present, until an agreement is reached, I am not sure why it has not been covered in the financial memorandum.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Ross Greer
I and the committee will appreciate that further information, but given Ms Bennett’s answer, there seems, at least, to be a range of potential costs that could be assumed for VAT. My understanding of the standing orders on what is required for financial memorandums is that such a range could have been put into this financial memorandum.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Ross Greer
I absolutely accept that there are drawbacks to both approaches, but do you accept that the drawback with this sequence of events is the challenge that it presents to parliamentary scrutiny of what, in the Government’s own words, is the most significant reform taking place in the current parliamentary session?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Ross Greer
Finally, the emergency budget review, which was announced last week, included a £70 million saving in the budget line for social care and the NCS. We all understand why the review was necessary, and I am not disputing the need for it, but how much of that £70 million, if any, relates to NCS costs in the current financial year?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Ross Greer
That would be appreciated—thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Ross Greer
In the first instance, I would be interested in your thoughts on the level of pay in Scotland’s colleges, specifically at senior management and principal levels. Do you think that it is justifiable that there are multiple college principals in Scotland who earn more than the First Minister?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Ross Greer
Thank you. I certainly agree with that sentiment. If you look at pay growth in the sector over the past 30 years, you see that pay growth for senior management, and in particular principals, has completely outstripped, by a huge margin, that for lecturers or support staff.
10:15I appreciate that you shared with the committee the lessons learned report that Strathesk recently completed. However, I got a distinct sense of déjà vu when reading it. The report notes that the most consistent theme is the crushing lack of trust between the parties in the National Joint Negotiation Committee negotiations. In fact, it refers to it as a
“debilitatingly low level of trust”.
The report also observes the fact that that conclusion is not new—it was the key conclusion in the similar review that was conducted by John Sturrock five years ago. Why has no progress been made on resolving the core issue that is resulting in such regular industrial action?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Ross Greer
I accept that the relationship that union and college management have individually with the Scottish Government is better than the relationship that they have with one another. However, given that this conclusion was exactly the same one that John Sturrock came to five years ago, what specifically has the Scottish Government done in that intervening period to play a constructive role in facilitating a better relationship between unions and management, rather than your direct relationship with each of them? What role have you played in this period of time to try to resolve what John Sturrock concluded about their relationship with one another?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Ross Greer
Will the Scottish Government issue a fuller response to the exercise? I accept that it is primarily for the unions and college management to respond to, but there is a role for Government here, and there are conclusions in relation to the Government. Will there be a fuller response from you on the contents of the report?
