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 986 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
We are probably talking about people who would be seen as gatekeepers in the process—those in social work departments, among others, who function as commissioners. Does logic suggest that it would be better for that role to sit with a national body than for it to sit locally?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
It is important to pull some of those threads together. Is there an opportunity in the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill to do that? Obviously, it is a Government bill, and we would not want to lose sight of some of those elements that are broadly supported by the learning disability sector and others.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
That follows on from Frank McKillop’s point about social work. There is a debate—we have heard evidence on both sides of the argument—about whether social work and children’s services should be in or out of the scope of the NCS. Is it important that the social work profession stays together, whatever the end point is, because of what has been said about transitions?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
I suppose that when the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman was before the committee she would have raised concerns about duplication of processes, if we had gone for a new national complaints procedure. The Scottish Social Services Council and the Care Inspectorate would probably say similar things.
Would the intention be that there would be a requirement to resource a new national complaints service—in essence, to spend money at national level on people to handle complaints, do an investigation and then feed back to whoever was providing the care? Is that the vision that has come through the consultation?
I know that Community Integrated Care said that there was concern that taking the complaints process out of the local context is perhaps not helpful. If there is time, perhaps Karen Sheridan might want to comment on that.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage1
Meeting date: 29 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
I will try to draw some of this together and think about the broad theme of how we will measure the success or otherwise of the bill. There has been a lot of discussion this morning, and with other witnesses, of Derek Feeley’s review and of how to achieve what was set out in that review. How will we assess and measure the success of the national care service bill, and will the current level of detail in the bill be sufficient to allow us to judge whether it has achieved its aims? I will start with Peter McCormick, and then Margaret McCarthy, Fanchea Kelly and Nick Price might want to come in.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage1
Meeting date: 29 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
Rachel, CCPS submission’s says:
“The Scottish Government appears to have taken the view that aspects of the detailed implementation of the Bill should be subject to codesign but that the overall approach to system redesign and structural reform should not.”
Do you think that that is back to front in some ways and that there should have been co-design in advance of the bill to inform what it looks like? How would you respond to those who have called for a pause on the bill to try to get it right?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage1
Meeting date: 29 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
In the Randolph Hill submission, you spoke about being concerned about an absence of criteria to judge success or failure. Do you recognise that there is not enough detail in the bill to measure success against?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage1
Meeting date: 29 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
I am interested in any of the other witnesses’ comments on the broad question about measuring success.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage1
Meeting date: 29 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
I want to follow on from that by pulling some of the threads together and going back to first principles with the Feeley review, which Rachel Cackett mentioned in a previous answer. Can the bill achieve what everyone agreed with regard to the review’s aims, or is there too much focus now on structure as opposed to the investment in social care that we have just talked about? I appreciate that that is a broad question, but I ask Rachel Cackett and then Karen Hedge to comment.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage1
Meeting date: 29 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
I wonder whether we can look at the relationships that already exist on a local level. Both CCPS and Scotland Excel have expressed concern that the focus on structure could be to the detriment of the existing local relationships. Rachel Cackett has commented on that, which was helpful, and I want to ask Julie Welsh to elaborate on the Scotland Excel concerns. Julie, do you feel that there is a risk that the bill could damage already well-established and successful local relationships?
