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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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Elena Whitham
That concludes our public agenda items for today.
09:00 Meeting continued in private until 11:36.Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
Yes, that would be helpful. Do you have any further questions, Pam?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
Our next item of business is an evidence session on the resource spending review. I welcome to the meeting Shona Robison, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, and Kate Forbes, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy. I welcome the cabinet secretaries’ officials: we are joined in person by Gemma Dalton, who is the public spending team leader, and Kevin Stevens, who is the head of strategic and programme finance. Good morning. Thanks for coming in early to join us today—that is fantastic. We are joined remotely by Julie Humphreys, who is the deputy director for tackling child poverty and financial wellbeing, Sarah O’Donnell, who is the strategic lead for finance and governance, and Joanne Farrow, who is the deputy director of employability.
I will hand over to the cabinet secretaries to make their opening statements. Shona Robison, do you want to go first?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
As always, we are running over time, and we have a number of questions to get through. I will bring in Pam Duncan-Glancy and then hand over to Jeremy Balfour before we move on to the next section.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
It is always helpful when members ask other members’ questions, because it allows us to move swiftly on. I will go back to Jeremy Balfour, who has a question on digital exclusion.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
Welcome back. Our next item of business is the final evidence session in our inquiry into low income and debt problems. I welcome back to the meeting Shona Robison, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, and I welcome Tom Arthur, the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth. We are also joined by Elaine Moir, who is head of the Scottish Government’s financial wellbeing unit; Robin Haynes, who is head of council tax and alternative local tax policy at the Scottish Government; and Alex Reid, who is head of policy development at the Accountant in Bankruptcy. Everybody is in the room with us today.
I invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
That is very helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
Good morning. Welcome to the 20th meeting in 2022 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. Our first item of business is to decide whether to take items 4 and 5 in private. Do we agree to do that?
Members indicated agreement.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
Jeremy Balfour has questions about changes to the legal framework.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Low Income and Debt Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Elena Whitham
That would be helpful. Thank you for that.
I have a question on the arrestment of wages. We heard from a number of people that the amount of money that people were being left with in the bank after the arrestment of wages for debts was not enough for them to address their immediate needs and that no consideration was given to the composition of the household and whether it was a single person or, indeed, somebody with a big family. Is there anything in the Scottish Government’s powers that it could use to mitigate that?
