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 1152 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Alternative pathways to primary care can help to ease some of the pressures on GPs and on other areas of the NHS. There is still a lot of work to do, and I call on the cabinet secretary—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Sorry, convener. I had meant that to be shorter.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
On the point about locally elected members and decision making, it was my understanding that care boards would include elected members as well as different organisations—local, third sector and voluntary organisations—and people with lived experience. I just make that point.
What does a human rights-based approach look like in the context of the bill, particularly for care-experienced young people, children with disabilities, young carers and children with additional support needs? I will go first to Cameron-Wong McDermott, who looks keen.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That answer was incredibly helpful. I suppose that the co-production or co-design that is at the centre of the proposal focuses on the areas that you talked about.
The aim of the framework bill is to produce a bit of legislation that we can then hang the secondary legislation on, if you like. However, do you feel that anything is missing from the framework bill? Is there anything that you would like us to make a recommendation on?
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?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Are we looking only at children and families or are we looking at the partnership involvement as well?
11:45Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Is statistical information part of that as well? I know that it is gathered in different ways, and that different information is collected in different local authority areas.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I hear what you say, but the fact is that delivery would still be local. I have sat on integration joint boards, too, so I know where you are coming from.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That was a good explanation. As we have heard, the Promise involved co-production and co-design. The Promise has been huge. That change in culture and ethos and that focus on relationships and wellbeing have been incredibly important, and it is great that that is coming through into other areas as well. It is very much about the idea that we have been doing things to people rather than with them.
My question may be for Fraser McKinlay. Cameron-Wong said that 5,500 people were involved in the Promise. I am not saying that we would need to look at working at that scale, but co-design is obviously about involving young people and families. Who should be involved? Is co-production well enough understood or is there work to be done around that in order to help the process?
