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 1268 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Miles Briggs
One of my concerns is that the data covers a pandemic period, when breaks were suspended and were not available. It feels as though the figure is artificially low in predicting potential uptake.
Will a national care service help to standardise the approach so that more carers can access support plans and statements, to ensure that they have the right to a break? We have discussed what is often referred to as a postcode lottery, in which people can access different services depending on where they live. On improvements in standards and consistency, I support clinical standards and think that we should have had them a long time ago in Scotland, although we do not necessarily need the bill to achieve that. Where could standards be improved and, importantly, how should they be included in the bill? There is very little detail.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Miles Briggs
A lot of what is in the bill has come out of the experience of people during the pandemic. For many of us, that was concerning. For example, I do not think that the Government has ever properly explained the measures on the suspension of power of attorney.
I am interested in the Anne’s law campaign, which I think all parties have supported. Section 40 in the bill requires care homes to comply with ministerial directions on visiting. That is about visiting, but my concern is that it does not necessarily talk about patient rights and individual rights. Does anyone have specific comments on section 40?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Miles Briggs
I want to follow the questions that Paul McLennan asked. You made some important points, Alison White, because at the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, which Paul McLennan and I are also members of, we heard that two examples of good policy making around co-design have been ending homelessness together and the Promise, where you were brought in at the beginning of the process, not at the end. Specifically, how do you think that the Scottish Government can, given the process that it has decided to use for this, make sure that the national care service is not potentially destabilising for care users, their carers and the wider workforce? Where do you think that that co-design will come in during this process?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Miles Briggs
Does anyone else want to come in?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Miles Briggs
So, one of the 24 groups might be having a wee look at that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Miles Briggs
Does anyone else want to come in?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Miles Briggs
My final question is about the financial memorandum. The issue of pensions liabilities and insurance for staff was also raised at the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. Given that we are talking about 75,000 people being transferred from all 32 local authorities to a national care service, has there been any discussion about what that will look like from the point of view of the potential cost and liability, which, currently, has not been outlined by the Government?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Miles Briggs
Good morning to the panel and thank you for joining us.
I will follow up on some of the questions that the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy highlighted in its submission. The CIPFA directors of finance argue that the issues facing the current system are a product of underfunding by the Scottish Government. However, the same submission states that councils are now spending around 20 per cent more on adult social care and children’s services than they did 10 years previously.
Audit Scotland’s assessment is that
“the pace of change has been slow. The performance of current services is variable and there are significant service areas that are not meeting expectations”.
In the light of those two statements, do the witnesses want to comment on the current situation and the impact that a national care service is likely to have on it?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Miles Briggs
I agree with all those concerns. Given the specific pressures that Edinburgh faces with delayed discharge—I think that almost half of all delayed discharge is here in the capital—and homelessness, such as the number of children in temporary accommodation, the restructuring cannot help to tackle those problems at this moment.
From the earlier panel of witnesses, we heard about the challenges that are likely to come from transferring 75,000 local authority staff to a new national care service. Specifically, they raised a concern about pensions. That issue did not necessarily exist with the centralisation of the police and fire services in 2013. What lessons have been learned from the creation of a national police service and fire service? What pitfalls are we seeing with the creation of a national care service?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Miles Briggs
Some of my questions around the impact that the bill will have on homelessness prevention legislation have been touched on, but I want to expand on third sector involvement. At the time of the integration of health and social care, one of the key criticisms that we heard was that the third sector was not at the table and therefore did not have a chance to influence decision making. Do you think that that has changed with regard to the early stages of the development of the national care service?
