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 606 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Emma Roddick
That is really helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Emma Roddick
My first question is for Paul Bradley, but either of the other witnesses might want to jump in as well. Across my region, quite a lot of commercial businesses have had to close their doors because of rising energy prices. How badly affected are third sector organisations?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Emma Roddick
I will dig a little deeper into the issues around energy policy. It is of course reserved, so a lot of action here is simply asking the UK Government to act. The Scottish Government has asked for a price cap freeze to be applied to businesses; do you support that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Emma Roddick
My first question is for Dr Alison Hosie and is about the human rights approach to budgeting. What is your take on how the Scottish Government is directing support to Ukrainian refugees through access to housing and social security? Do you consider that to be a human rights approach?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 22 September 2022
Emma Roddick
In relation to alternatives within a fixed budget, we have just seen the new programme for government. Is there anything in there that you consider to be gratuitous, in the sense that the money should have gone towards tackling poverty?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Emma Roddick
Yes.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Emma Roddick
We have heard from quite a few witnesses—in particular, from experts by experience—about the ways in which mental health issues are made worse by debt and the ways in which debt prevents people from accessing advice services, especially where trauma is involved. Is the Scottish Government aware of that difficulty, and is it doing specific work to encourage services to become trauma informed?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Emma Roddick
It is clear that there is quite a contrast, and you will be aware of new analysis that shows that independent European countries that are comparable to Scotland, often with a similar population, are both wealthier and fairer than the UK. Poverty rates are lower in those countries, with fewer children living in poverty and pensioner poverty rates being lower. What are the opportunities if we had the additional powers at our disposal that those other countries have?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Emma Roddick
Good morning to both witnesses. First, I pick up on the expectation that was laid out to the Finance and Public Administration Committee that short-term social security spend that addresses child poverty will mean that, in the longer term, fewer people will require that support. Will you explain a bit more about how the long-term finances are expected to be improved in order to deliver that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Emma Roddick
I will move on to other issues that were raised by witnesses. In May, Kirsty McKechnie, from the Child Poverty Action Group, told us that she believes there is a
“direct correlation between food bank use and the two-child limit.”—[Official Report, Social Justice and Social Security Committee, 19 May 2022; c 4.]
The Govan Law Centre told us that the removal of the £20 universal credit uplift made the difference between people having to use food banks and not, and Inclusion Scotland told us that the five-week wait for universal credit sets folk up to fail. What analysis has the Scottish Government done of the overall impact of those and other UK Government welfare policies?
