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 1063 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government in Scotland: Overview 2023
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
We could certainly see that with shared IT systems, shared services and shared estates.
Some of the evidence that we took from the famous Jackie Weaver about the role of community councils down south was interesting. One of the points that she made was that more-empowered community councils and parish councils in England were taking on services at a very local level and could deliver them much more effectively and cost effectively than local authorities could. I see that in my constituency with community groups taking on community halls and making them work, whereas the council could not. Do you see scope in that area as well?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Devolving Scotland
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
Okay. The discussion and narrative on whether that was a good or bad thing ended up being between the parties at Scottish Parliament level, rather than local authorities taking that forward. I just wanted to clarify that that was the point that you were making.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Devolving Scotland
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
I will get into the substance of my question. You have opened up a debate on the system and structure, with Jack McConnell starting that off, very much in the space of whether the current boundaries in the structure are effective. I want to explore your thinking on that. You mentioned the interface between local government and health boards, but that opens up another question on whether the health board structure is correct, which is a whole other subject. Clearly, stuff can be done at the regional level, through either restructuring or local authorities co-operating with one another, but there is also what happens locally with community planning partnerships and community councils, on which the committee has taken evidence. Clearly, there is an issue about whether more can be done at a very local level.
What is your thinking on that? Is there a need for a multisphere system in local government, or can it be done using the existing structure, but with more flexibility in how things are done?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government in Scotland: Overview 2023
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
I cannot resist a follow-up question on that last point. It is hugely important. We are talking about social care spend and preventative spend in the context of local government, but, of course, it is the health service that feels the pain from that. The IJB model has not delivered on that, so do you want to comment on how that could work? Clearly, all of that, right back to ambulance queues, is a result of social care not delivering.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government in Scotland: Overview 2023
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
That brings us nicely on to what I was going to ask about, which was exactly that: embracing radical change. What does that look like? You might want to give some examples. How does that embracing of radical change play out with councils working more closely together and with other public sector partners? Is it through shared services and back office functions and sharing premises? When I was in government, getting the Scottish Government to talk to local authorities about sharing space was, at times, an interesting challenge in both directions. Following on from that, what are the implications of that for the workforce?
Maybe you could start by talking about the radical ideas, about what is out there, what needs to happen, what can happen and how we move that forward.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government in Scotland: Overview 2023
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
I might be naive, but I would have thought that the fact that local governments are short of money—we know that they are short of money because they never miss an opportunity to tell us that they are short of money—would be the burning platform that would persuade people to talk to their neighbour about how they can do things better. You are saying, however, that you see very little evidence of that on the ground.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government in Scotland: Overview 2023
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
Okay.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government in Scotland: Overview 2023
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
Concentrically, perhaps.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government in Scotland: Overview 2023
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
My last point is on the workforce, the intent in the RSR to get the size of the public sector workforce back to pre-Covid levels and the implications of that for local government. How is that playing out? I also want to understand specifically the extent to which that is looked at through the lens of comparing how efficient different councils are at using the headcount that they have, how they deliver certain services with a given headcount or a given corps, and the balance between what you might call front-line roles and what you might call back-office, management or supervisory roles. Is any work happening to assess which councils are most effective in that regard?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government in Scotland: Overview 2023
Meeting date: 13 June 2023
Ivan McKee
Yes, and the labour market will not get any less tight. Average public sector wages are still higher than average private sector wages. It will absolutely continue to be a challenge. Thank you very much.
