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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 1198 contributions
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
That is good to hear. You might want to answer my second question in writing rather than answer it today. It concerns something that occurred to me while I was listening to you.
One of the issues that was put to us when we were examining the carers allowance was that there may well be two people caring for a parent or for a child but that the benefit is delivered on a first-come, first-served basis, which is the same in relation to the Scottish child payment. Have you considered that you might end up with two people offering the same care but only one getting the benefit, because they applied before the other one? Has there been any evidence taken on that, has it been an issue and is it something that you and your officials have been looking at in any context at all? I appreciate that that is coming out of left field, so I am happy if you would rather take it away and respond in writing.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I will be brief, because I am conscious of the time. I once had a case where someone was due £1,000 and got £110,000 and never declared it. However, we will move on.
There is one thing that has been a difficulty for the DWP under the present system. Every year, people get their annual letter that says, in about paragraph 4, “If your circumstances have changed, you need to let us know.” I suspect that most people, including me, never read that line. However, people’s circumstances change and they need more or less benefit. I am not convinced by the use of one line in an annual letter. Will the new agency communicate more effectively, perhaps, with people who are being transferred from the personal independence payment and whose circumstances may get worse or better? How will that be communicated to them in perhaps a more enlightening way?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
It would very helpful if we could get some kind of indication in writing.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I have two questions, the first of which is procedural. We have touched previously on the time that SCOSS gets to respond. It pointed out in its report that it had a restricted time to get the response done. Are you looking at giving it a longer period of time to consider the recommendations, so that the committee and the Parliament can take that into account?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
It is good to see you all here. I will move on to overpayments. We all know that they happen irregularly, but they do happen. When I was a tribunal member, we had to hear some of those cases. It will probably become more of a live issue next year, when adult benefits are transferred. Clearly, we want to keep the founding principles of dignity, respect and so on; at the same time, there are people out there who make fraudulent claims. How will such issues be investigated? What methodology will you use to deal with them?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 25 November 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I have a couple of questions. First, what difference do the witnesses think that it would make if the Scottish Government amended the forthcoming adult disability payment to ensure that those who receive the enhanced daily living component are able to claim the winter heating assistance payment? This has been picked up on already, but would that target funds in a better way than is being done at the moment? That question might be best for CAS.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
Jeremy Balfour
May I come back to a point that my colleague Miles Briggs made about the funeral support payment? I should declare that I am the convener of the cross-party group on funerals and bereavement. In my initial conversations with funeral directors, they were very positive about filling out the form for the payment and they felt that the process was working well. Again, the 59 per cent take-up rate for the funeral support payment surprises me. What are we going to do to get to the other 41 per cent who have not taken up that payment? I appreciate that some people have organised their own funerals and will not fall into that category, but I do not think that the percentage will be that high. I might have missed this, minister—I apologise if so—but what are we going to do about that? Is there a geographical breakdown of that data? Is it more likely that people in central Scotland are claiming compared with people in the Borders or the Highlands? Is that data being recorded by Social Security Scotland and, if so, could we see a breakdown of those figures?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
Jeremy Balfour
My question follows on a bit from theme 1 but also relates to this theme. The Social Security Committee made a visit to Wester Hailes when we were looking at the issue of uptake. It came out clearly that a lot of people will not even go to a school or their nearest GP to get information. In fact, one person said to us that, unless we go door to door, we will miss a lot of people. I appreciate that it is not possible to go door to door, but how do we get the information down to those people who, as Pam Duncan-Glancy mentioned, are not already on those benefits? A lot of those individuals are not on Facebook and are certainly not on Twitter. What strategy do we have to reach the hardest-to-reach individuals, who would find it difficult to cross a road to get that information, let alone go elsewhere? How do we get that information out to people, particularly post-pandemic, when there is less access to GPs and we cannot get into schools at the moment?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 11 November 2021
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, minister, and good morning to your team. It is good to have you back at the committee again.
On page 48 of the strategy document, there is a commitment
“to undertake a review of Adult Disability Payment in summer 2023”.
Will that review look at whether the transition has been safe and secure, and whether it has been done with dignity, fairness and respect? Will it review the descriptors of what ADP might look like in the future? How wide will the review be?
I also ask you to look into your crystal ball. Depending on what the recommendations are and whether there is agreement on them, is your initial thinking that they will be implemented by the Parliament during this session, or are you looking to next session?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Jeremy Balfour
Perhaps he is on mute or taking a break.