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 1251 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
Is that something that you will develop, or have you not thought about it at this stage?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
Thanks.
Cara Stevenson, do you want to come in from the union point of view about where you see the process? How has the workforce been involved at this stage and where do you see it being involved as the process develops? As in my last question, it is almost about assessing how the proposals evolve and where you see yourselves and your members involved in reviewing that process.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
Sara, can I bring you in for your point of view? The other thing to hang out there for other panel members is involving the workforce and what the impact would be of not involving the workforce, so, if you want to come in on that, you could come in after that. Sara, from the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, I know that it is much broader for you, but, in terms of volunteers and, in particular, from a woman’s point of view, do you have any thoughts or comments on the design of this?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
Does anybody else have anything to add? If not, that is me.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
A few of my questions have already been asked, but I will focus on a couple of things. Once we get into the co-design part of the process, how do we measure the effectiveness of that? If we go through the process and we think that we need to change things, how do we measure that and what is the process for that? The second and the most important question is, how are people fully involved? Your organisation is involved. How are the people that you represent also involved in that discussion? How do we measure how effective co-design has been when we get further down the process? I will come to Paul Traynor first and then open the question to others.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
Thank you. I will come to Adam Stachura for the Age Scotland point of view. One of the key points is the view from the organisation itself, and obviously the people you represent, in trying to add in the checks and balances going through the co-design process. Do you want to comment on how you would do that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
Does Suzanne Munday have anything to add on that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
Alison White, can I bring you in from the social work point of view?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
Is there another stage before you move on to the co-design? I am trying to dig deeper on that, because you are saying that there is an interdependency between a lot of issues. Do you want a pause before you get into that, or do you want the consultation process to be a little bit longer?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Paul McLennan
On that point, I know that you are here representing the organisation, but do you have any thoughts on speaking to the people you represent and getting their points of view as we start to co-design the bill?
