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 1198 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 26 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
My final question will just push that a bit further. With public debts to local authorities, is there any other way that local authorities could act without having to put people into bankruptcy?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 26 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Most of my questions have been covered, but there is one area that I wanted to pursue briefly. From the evidence that we have taken over the past number of weeks, many people are in a crisis situation that might get worse into the autumn and early next year. However, a lot of what you have been talking about—primary legislation, more reviews and recommendations and so on—is longer term. If there were the political will, what things could be done quickly and immediately to make people’s lives easier? In your opinion, is there nothing that can be done in the short term about bankruptcy to make things easier?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 26 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you.
10:15Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 26 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, and thank you for coming. I have a couple of questions that follow on from the deputy convener’s questions. Do you know what the percentage is of public debt for the people who come to you with bankruptcy? How much of the debt is because of either rent arrears or council tax?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I think that it is August, but we can check that.
I have a question about secondary school. You talked about people who are in work and whose children are not entitled to free school meals at secondary school. How do you identify those individuals? If we had free school meals across the board from S1 to S6, the danger is that we would stigmatise people, because those who have money would go to get their lunch outside and those who do not would have to stay in the building. How do we identify those who need help, and how do you suggest schools go about doing that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
If somebody comes in with an issue to do with council tax or rent arrears, what is the policy? How would that be handled at a practical level by local authorities?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Your last sentence almost answered one of my questions, but I seek clarification on the issue. I think that, from August, every child in primary school will get free school meals. Is that right?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I have a final question on a slightly different theme. Do we know how much outstanding debt is historical—that is, more than 10 years old? How much of it would be from the past five years? Is it possible to get a breakdown?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I suppose that what we have been hearing over the past few weeks is that that is not working. We have a crisis at the moment with the fuel bills, food bills and all these other issues that people are facing, but the evidence that we have been hearing is that local authorities seem to be pursuing this process quite rigorously. What you have highlighted might be happening on paper but it does not seem to be happening in practice.
The question, therefore, is: what should local authorities be doing over the next six or seven months? I have to say that six months is quite a long time for a lot of people who are struggling with debt at the moment, but what advice should the Scottish Government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Parliament be giving local authorities at this particular moment to deal with the current situation?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Finally, we understand from evidence that we have taken in previous weeks that there is no statutory duty on local authorities to offer advice services. I know a lot of them fund such services, but it is not something that they have to do. Would it make any difference to make the provision of advice a statutory duty across all 32 local authorities? Would that not ensure that at least those working in that area would know that they had funding coming in future years?
