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 848 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Thank you, convener. I welcome the witnesses to the committee.
This question is for both of you. Has integration led to more collaborative working across the public sector, and between it and third sector organisations? Has that helped to improve outcomes for children and young people?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That is really interesting, because one of the points that the people whom I spoke to yesterday made was that, last winter, they had one of the lowest delayed discharge rates in Scotland and they felt that data sharing was a huge part of the reason for it.
Colin Poolman’s comments on what else we could put in the bill were also interesting. Is there anything else that witnesses would like to be in the bill to help multidisciplinary working to become more effective, particularly in relation to early intervention and preventative care?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That is helpful to know.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I thank the witnesses for being here this morning.
Yesterday, we paid a visit to Granite Care Consortium in Aberdeen, which consists of 10 providers. People from the health and social care partnership were there, too. They talked quite a lot about moving away from the time-and-task model to an outcome-based delivery system, which is increasing their capacity. Shona from the health and social care partnership described providers as being like a spider’s web that pulls everything together over the top of the city. Are there opportunities to improve multidisciplinary work by adopting that approach through the national care service? I will go to Alison Bavidge first.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Cara Stevenson spoke earlier about the fact that care workers are at breaking point—you were passionate and quite emotional about it—because they have faced an incredibly difficult time. Nurses are facing an equally tough time. However, nurses have a certain image, because people appreciate that nursing is a real vocation and that it is a very skilled job. There is a huge amount of appreciation for nurses, which social care workers, perhaps, do not always get.
Therefore, I am interested in what the benefits and risks might be of a prerequisite that prospective social care staff have qualifications. I am also interested in how we might attract young people into the workforce and show them that it can be a worthwhile and enjoyable job.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Thank you, convener—I am back again.
Alison Bavidge is absolutely spot on. We all know that data drives what we do, so data collection is hugely important.
When we look at outcomes, the voices of professionals are often right up there. How can we ensure that we also hear the voices of those who receive care and services, because sometimes their view can be a wee bit different? It is about having parity.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I want to briefly pick up on a wee point that Kay McVeigh made about staff feeling that they do not know what will happen or where they will be with their terms and conditions. I thought that TUPE meant that people’s terms and conditions had to be at least as good as their previous ones.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Sorry, convener. I had meant that to be shorter.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
On the point about locally elected members and decision making, it was my understanding that care boards would include elected members as well as different organisations—local, third sector and voluntary organisations—and people with lived experience. I just make that point.
What does a human rights-based approach look like in the context of the bill, particularly for care-experienced young people, children with disabilities, young carers and children with additional support needs? I will go first to Cameron-Wong McDermott, who looks keen.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That answer was incredibly helpful. I suppose that the co-production or co-design that is at the centre of the proposal focuses on the areas that you talked about.
The aim of the framework bill is to produce a bit of legislation that we can then hang the secondary legislation on, if you like. However, do you feel that anything is missing from the framework bill? Is there anything that you would like us to make a recommendation on?
