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 2186 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Redress Scheme
Meeting date: 12 January 2023
Stephen Kerr
Your commitment is to expand that if necessary—is that correct?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Redress Scheme
Meeting date: 12 January 2023
Stephen Kerr
I appreciate how you are responding to the voice, as it were, of the survivor, because it is important that their voice is heard in the proceedings of the committee.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Redress Scheme
Meeting date: 12 January 2023
Stephen Kerr
Another survivor said in relation to the issue of support:
“It’s not acceptable for survivors to have to keep reliving their trauma because a public body can’t get their skates on and fix things.”
That is a reflection of the frustration that you have described.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Complaint
Meeting date: 22 December 2022
Stephen Kerr
Thank you for having me on the committee. I have had experience of work in connection with public affairs, and I advise those who are watching and listening to go to my entry in the register of members’ interests if they wish to know the details.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Stephen Kerr
It is not dependent on structural change, is it? The way that you described it earlier is that it is about people and leadership—people taking the initiative to bring other people together to work on improving the delivery of a service.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Stephen Kerr
There is no denying that things can be improved; you are making that clear. However, you have also raised the spectre of the way that the public sector, in particular, often struggles with change and the delivery of change—it is a red flag, actually. Will you comment on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Stephen Kerr
What I think I am hearing—if my interpretation and comprehension skills are what they should be—is that change is quite difficult to manage in your organisations, in terms of integration and working together. I am referring to the evidence that you have submitted in writing. For example, in its submission, North Lanarkshire IJB mentioned concern about the impact that the bill would have in that
“a significant change programme”
could
“cause ... partner bodies to look inwards for a period to address organisational concerns”.
Similarly, Dundee City Council mentioned that the proposed changes would “create greater complexity”, which would cause disruption in established working relationships. Am I interpreting that correctly? Can you help me?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Stephen Kerr
Can I hear some comments from other members of the panel on what I have just said? I quoted the Northern Alliance evidence, which says that children’s services will be swallowed up and lost in the context of adult services.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Stephen Kerr
I do not want to broaden it; I want to do exactly what you have suggested, convener.
First, I turn to Nicky Connor, who is from Fife Council. Your written evidence states:
“there is no evidence to including children’s services in a NCS and the disruption that structural reform would cause would be of benefit to children and young people.”
That is a stark comment. Would you like to elaborate?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Stephen Kerr
I will ask my last question and then we can go to Fiona.
The bill is an enabling bill and it contains very little detail about what a national care service would look like. Basically, we are told that the powers will be transferred to ministers and that we will find out at some future point the detail of what the national care service’s design and structures will look like. From your point of view, is that a sensible way to make the change that you have, in part, just advocated?
