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 812 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Are there are elements in the bill that provide opportunities to address existing inequalities and to improve accessibility? Jackie Irvine might be able to pick up on that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
As I understand it, there will be changes to children’s services, depending on where those services sit now—whether the structure in place is an IJB or a lead organisation—and regardless of whether those are included in the national care service. Are you saying that, on balance, including children’s services would be more positive than not doing so?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Thank you, Mr Feeley, for all your work so far and your on-going work.
I have heard some criticism that the bill is not sufficiently focused on prevention and early intervention. There is not much mention of that in the bill or in the memorandum. Is that an issue, or is that part of the human rights-based approach to the bill? Is there something else that we should do to put prevention and intervention more at the centre of the framework bill?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Human rights are absolutely at the centre of the bill and the approach to the delivery of social care. For some people, those rights often seem to be at odds with the constraints that are imposed by finite resources. Is that always true? Is that your experience, or does investment in that approach mean that people do not reach the point of crisis? You said that the shift in focus to prevention and early intervention really strengthened the human rights-based approach to social care. Informal community initiatives also often mean that small issues do not grow into much bigger issues because that support is provided locally.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
We have discussed ethical commissioning and procurement. Could the review’s recommendations in that regard be met within the current model? Why did you not consider alternatives such as public-social partnerships and alliancing? Is such a radical redesign of social care commissioning absolutely necessary?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Will the bill as introduced create the conditions for innovation? Are co-design and co-production well enough and broadly enough understood across health and social care?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That was really great—what you said was dead helpful. The point about protections for chief social work officers was well made, although I note that it could apply to heads of service as well, and not just at the very top level.
My question picks up on Gillian Mackay’s points. In my constituency, Enable Scotland uses SDS and delivers personal assistants. The approach is about focusing on the individual and what matters to them, and it involves taking a wellbeing approach and a preventative approach, rather than picking from a choice of services that happen to be available. I am really interested in that approach. You mentioned the costs that are associated with it, but Enable has said that, actually, most of the time, it does not cost more, which is interesting. What recommendations would you like us to make in our report to ensure that that issue is front and centre in the bill and that we have it covered?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I noted that COSLA’s submission talked about the bill failing to
“address the difficult issue set out in the Independent Review of Adult Social Care, that of profit within the sector.”
Its submission also said that
“Private sector provision ... accounts for 76 per cent of care home provision.”
So, it is really about profiteering rather than reinvestment. Should reform of non-residential and residential care funding be included in the national care service bill?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
My question is for Patricia Cassidy. What co-design is already under way with social work and social care staff? Is that presenting opportunities for social workers, for example, to better apply their expertise?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Universities
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Yes, thank you, convener.
