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 1194 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
You will be comforted to note that we plan to return to that issue early in the new year.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
That would be helpful. We all understand and appreciate the difficulties that carers have been going through during the pandemic. We took evidence on that during the passage of the Carer’s Allowance Supplement (Scotland) Act 2021. I take your point about the fact that the number of unpaid carers has grown during the pandemic. The Scottish Government appears to have recognised that point but we would be interested in finding out more about the extent to which it will meet demand, so any supplementary information that you have on that would be gratefully received.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
Do you have a further question, Marie, before I bring in Jeremy Balfour, who indicated that he had some questions in this area?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
The child poverty targets are a key theme in the committee’s early work, particularly our scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s budget. You mentioned in your submission, and you have said this morning, that women’s poverty and child poverty are intrinsically linked. Single parents are most likely to be women, and women are most likely to work in part-time or low-income roles. To what extent are the changes to universal credit having an impact on child poverty rates in Scotland? The investment in work allowances is obviously very welcome, but there is also the £20 per week cut to the standard allowance.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
Welcome back. We will now hear from Sara Cowan, who is the co-ordinator of the Scottish Women’s Budget Group. Good morning, Sara. We appreciate you giving your time to the committee today.
I remind everyone to type an R in the chat box if they would like to come in with a supplementary question or an answer. My colleagues will ask their questions in turn.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
Yes.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
Thank you—that is very helpful. Does Dame Susan have anything further to add to that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
Marie McNair will now ask her set of questions. I once again remind colleagues that if anybody wishes to come in at any stage, they should type R in the chat function.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
On the support that is available to unpaid carers, to what extent will the £5 million help with respite for unpaid carers? You said that it is not enough but will you quantify how supportive it will be and how much more would have been needed to help fill the gap, given the challenging time that unpaid carers have had through the pandemic?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 23 December 2021
Neil Gray
Do you have any further questions, Evelyn?
