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 192 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
If it exists, I will send it to the committee.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
Yes—although the Scottish Government civil service has its plan, which I referred to, and I gave you the Scottish Government statistics. I am not the permanent secretary and I am not in the civil service, but I am delighted with the progress that the permanent secretary is making.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
Yes. You have highlighted the forthcoming bill; my officials will be engaging on that in relation to the employment sphere. Although it will not be a bill that is just about employment, we will certainly engage on it. Engagement has begun already, but things are at quite an early stage. Susan Ferguson will come in to elaborate on her involvement.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
Absolutely. I, too, was struck by the comment that that has been identified as an issue. The benefit of having a committee inquiry is that it can take evidence and flag up issues to Parliament and ministers. I will definitely take away that message from today and investigate the matter. I also await the committee’s recommendations.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
Like the committee, I have visited fair start Scotland projects and offices around the country. I was at the opening of the new office in Ayr a month or so ago, and I met disabled people whose lives have been turned around by getting work through fair start Scotland. I am sure that you have heard similar stories. It is humbling and heart-warming to hear how people’s lives have been transformed by getting into work. A lot of good stuff is happening but, as I said, if there are gaps, we want to know about them.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
Good morning, committee. Thank you for inviting me along today and for the opportunity to discuss the disability employment gap, the progress that is being made and the challenges that remain, which I am pleased to see the committee is investigating.
The latest statistics show that we are making progress. The disability employment gap has reduced by 6.2 percentage points to 31.2 per cent, compared with 37.4 per cent back in 2016. That reduction has been due to a larger rise in the employment rate of disabled people relative to the increase in the employment rate of non-disabled people. It means that we are currently on track to achieve our ambition to halve the gap to 18.7 per cent by 2038. However, I think that we are all aware that significant challenges remain, including creating a culture of change in workplaces where disabled people can, we hope, be welcomed for the benefits that they bring.
As you will no doubt know, the employment gap between disabled people and their non-disabled peers is not a new thing, and it certainly exists throughout the United Kingdom and Europe to a greater or lesser extent. It is clear that no Government has found a very simple answer to the issue, but we know that taking an approach that meets the needs of each disabled person is key. That is why our devolved employability programmes use a person-centred approach to reduce or attempt to eliminate the barriers for disabled people. However, we need to do more to support people with learning disabilities, for example. Similarly, young disabled people need support to raise and meet their own aspirations through education and beyond.
Information is still emerging on the long-term impacts of the pandemic on the disability employment gap. It has added to the structural issues, but we are doing our best to mitigate that. For example, in relation to mental health, we have established a platform with information and guidance for employers, which I think we discussed the last time that I was before the committee.
Our commitment to at least halve the disability employment gap is an integral element of the Scottish Government’s fair work agenda. We published a refreshed fair work action plan late last year, setting out how we will continue our progress towards making Scotland a leading fair work nation and, as part of that, halving the disability employment gap. We will continue to work with people with lived experience to refine and develop our employability programmes, and we will work with employers to support them to make the cultural change that we want to see in all of Scotland’s workplaces.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
I am saying that it is difficult to pick one particular factor that has led to the progress that we are making, because various things are happening. It is a complex area, as we have discussed before. There are many people with different types of disabilities, and there is a lot of crossover between long-term sickness and disabilities. The statistics are going in the right direction, with more people who have disabilities getting into work and the gap closing. We are making progress. However, we are doing lots of different things to address the issue, so it is difficult to say which factor is having the biggest impact.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
There is work under way. It would probably take me a while to dig out the information now, but I am happy to follow up with the committee on the exact timetables. We are reviewing some of our plans—2024 comes to mind as a target date. However, we rely on people self-reporting disabilities—
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
In addition, I note that the Scottish Government does not collect all the data; a lot of the labour-market data is collected at United Kingdom level. We have given a commitment to look at what we can do in Scotland to improve the data. I know that Lewis Hedge will want to say something, because he is much closer than I am to that particular aspect.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Disability Employment Gap
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Richard Lochhead
We carried out a review of supported employment, which reported last year. We are working through the recommendations. I would want to double-check which recommendations might link to your question, because a lot of issues along those lines, which we have given a commitment to take forward, were identified.
On the “no one left behind” approach, I take your point about needing a single standard across the country and there being a postcode lottery. Obviously, if the committee has more to say about that in its inquiry, I will certainly want to hear it.
The “no one left behind” approach is about person-centred support so that, locally, people can have help that is bespoke for their needs. The case worker who helps them will deal with transport and other issues. We are trying to take a person-centred approach so that, if a person has transport challenges in a rural area or elsewhere, they will get advice and help with that as part of their support package.
We are trying to address the issue through taking a person-centred approach to help people. That could be about help with childcare or transport. The approach has been developed over the past couple of years, and we are hoping to build on it.
