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 1328 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Most of my questions have probably been answered. However—and we might be slightly going round in circles on this one—if we continue down this road and do not pause, as you have suggested, what do you think should be in the bill now that cannot wait for the secondary legislation? Again, that is quite a big question, but, if we assume that this is going to go on over the next few months, what would you like to see in the bill that you do not think can wait for regulations and guidance? Perhaps I can start with in-the-room Sarah, if that makes any sense.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you. Finally, I want to go back to Sarah Latto’s comments about the 200,000 unpaid workers. As someone who benefits from unpaid care, I have to ask: how do we ensure that we do not lose the voice of those workers in all of this? I realise that unpaid carers in different parts of Scotland will face different challenges and different issues. You do great work, but how do you ensure that that voice gets fed into the process? After all, we are talking about some of the key people who keep the system going and without whose help we would be in an even more difficult place.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I am conscious of the time, so let me ask a yes/no question, which might save us a bit of time. When we were debating the social security charter a number of years ago, one of the things that we debated was whether it should have a legal basis and be able to be challenged or reviewed in court. The Scottish Government came to the view that that should not be the case and it did not happen. Should the new charter have a legal status that would allow people to seek, if appropriate, legal judicial review?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
As a quick final question, has there been any meaningful engagement on this between the third sector and the Scottish Government, either at ministerial or civil service level?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you. Does anyone else want to give their views on that and on local delivery?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Anyone else? You can say that you do not know if that is the case.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
If you have the time, you can write to us more fully, but, as far as I can see, the new charter does not give new rights. Are there any particular new rights that you think should be in the charter to give the legal basis that Adam Stachura and others have spoken about, in relation to issues that people are facing day in, day out? Should there be anything more specific that is not there at the moment?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
You will be glad to hear that all my questions have been covered, so I am happy to rest, convener.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning to you all. I will start with a question for Alison White. An area that we have not covered yet is that of children’s services and criminal justice, which another working group is looking at. From your perspective as a social worker and someone who represents social workers across Scotland, do you think that criminal justice and children’s services should be included in the bill? I appreciate that that is a very big question, but could you give us a high-level overview of that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Yes—one day, you will make a good politician.
My second question is about the good practice that we share across Scotland. We do not want to lose the local, hands-on knowledge. I appreciate that a lot of this will come out of the working groups and the regulations, but do you have concerns that we will lose the good local knowledge that people have in, say, Stornoway, Edinburgh and Dumfries, as a result of it becoming a national service?
