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 883 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
Paul Ferguson has indicated that he wants to come in.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
That is all right; do not worry about it. Paul McLennan, do you have further questions?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
That segues nicely on to questions about school meal debts. To kick us off, we will take a question from Foysol Choudhury.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
Before I move to questions from my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy, I see that Martin Canavan and Betty Stone would both like to come in. I must ask you to keep your comments brief at this point.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
Do you want to come in on that, Betty?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
That reminds me of the fact that councils hold a lot of data and information. There is a need for them to passport where a family is eligible to receive another payment, whether it is school meals or other things. We need to make sure that councils do that as well, because they hold that data.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
Thank you very much for that, Kirsty McKechnie. I have seen cases in which tax credit debt, which is sometimes from years ago, is in the thousands of pounds. A family can never get out of that debt, particularly when they cannot find the historical information to try to defend their position or change the outcome.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
Betty Stone would like to respond, and then we will hear briefly from Kirsty McKechnie.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
I will take two final questions before we stop for a wee pause, from Paul McLennan and then Foysol Choudhury.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Elena Whitham
That would be helpful.
We will move on to our fourth theme, which is about the role that the social security system plays in relation to debt. I will bring in my colleague Emma Roddick, who is online.
