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 1877 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 December 2024
Bob Doris
Convener, after the follow-up question, do you want me to go on to my next line of questions?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
I appreciate your brevity.
When the Parliament passed the 2017 act, clear planning, reporting and scrutiny frameworks were established. For example, there are three delivery plans that go up to 2030, there is annual reporting to Parliament and this committee has an on-going role in relation to the act, as does Professor Sinclair. Dr Randolph, can you see a connection between that scrutiny framework and actions being taken? Are effective actions being taken because of the scrutiny framework? If so, it would be good to get an example of that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
That is precisely why I was asking. Do you have anything to add, Mr Birt?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
That is helpful. I note that I am not sweating it; I am thinking about whether, rather than tapering within universal credit for the Scottish child payment, there could be a roll-on, as Mr Dickie suggested. If there is no underlying issue, I am delighted to hear that, but I wanted to check on behalf of my constituents that there is no unintended consequence, which is the right question for the committee to ask.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
[Inaudible.]—Dr Randolph, that the modelling work exists in part because of the strategic scrutiny framework that the 2017 act put in place.
John Dickie, can you provide examples of the scrutiny framework leading to effective action to tackle child poverty? On the flipside of that, are there areas where additional scrutiny could result in greater actions? I suppose that it cuts both ways.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
It is right that you should challenge the Government and the Parliament: I have to ask about that, because you have mentioned it. We should move on to other things and not talk only about the Scottish child payment, but it was introduced at £10 a week about three years ago for children under six. It is now sitting at £26.70, which is an increase of about 250 per cent. You are rightly challenging that and asking for it to be higher. However, as we will talk about in relation to my next question, which is about investing in other areas, more can be done than just putting cash in families’ pockets; other investments can be made to tackle child poverty. Therefore, Mr Dickie, should we go further with the Scottish child payment or invest in other areas?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
Of course, Mr Dickie, in a Parliament of minorities, there is a balance to be struck in respect of how we split the direct cash in families’ pockets to tackle child poverty and all those other measures that you outlined. That budget process will go forward.
Mr Birt, do you want to comment briefly?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
Professor Sinclair’s comments mean that I will have to ask about United Kingdom levers of power—in particular, universal credit—to tackle the issue for that group of people, about which Mr Balfour rightly raises concerns.
I want to ask more about the quality of the information that we have. When we were talking about keeping 100,000 children out of poverty or lifting 40,000 to 60,000 children out of poverty, I was conscious that, in previous evidence sessions, the committee has heard about the significant improvement that the Scottish child payment of £26.70 a week has made for young people who were in deep and entrenched poverty who have not reached that arbitrary line. It is not enough, but it has made a dramatic improvement to their lives that has not been captured in the data.
My colleague Liz Smith wants to ask a lot more about data. However—before we move on from the quality of data—are we masking some of the challenges when we talk about 40,000 to 60,000 children being lifted out of poverty, and are we also selling some successes short when we do not say more about those who remain in poverty but who have also been helped a heck of a lot by that payment, Professor Sinclair?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
Could I ask a question?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 28 November 2024
Bob Doris
I will break the habit of a lifetime to do that.
My question goes back to the Scottish child payment and is about something that came up during our work on getting people back into employment and on family and parental employment support. There is a cliff edge with the Scottish child payment because, once someone loses their entitlement to universal credit—which is a tapered in-work benefit—they lose all their Scottish child payment. Liz Smith spoke about data. Is there any data about the impact of that loss? The committee has looked at that before and I think that we will have to return to it. Mr Dickie or Mr Birt, do you have any brief reflections on that?
