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 1926 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
A couple of weeks ago, another committee that I sit on it—the Equality, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee—took evidence about the budget. The Scottish Women’s Convention made a similar point to yours about the way that women workers are treated. I am disappointed but not surprised that it is so prevalent. Thank you for putting that on the record.
Sara Cowan, could you talk about your understanding of the role of social care and the social care workforce, and social care as a piece of infrastructure in general, in reducing poverty, inequality and promoting human rights?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you. I appreciate that response and it is clear about the importance of co-production and co-ordination. I will move on.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Do you think that the bill gets anywhere close to that? You mentioned the definition of independent living. Do you think that the bill could be strengthened to have that, or do you think that we need to do something else to address that, whether we call it the right to need satisfaction or something else? The things that have been set out in that paper are the sorts of things that people who use social care services need. Do you think that the bill could be strengthened?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
I should have said in the previous session that, in my entry in the register of members’ interests, it is noted that I worked for Inclusion Scotland.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you. Alison White, I ask you the same question.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you. That is very helpful. I have no further questions on this theme.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you. I appreciate that. I have no further questions.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
I appreciate what has been said about monitoring. That will be important. I should have said at the start that it is sensible to suspend the requirement for a local connection. People want to be able to live where they want to live, so it is important.
If, in the monitoring, you were to find that particular local authorities had quite an uptick in applications, possibly as a result of the suspension, would you provide funding to them to ensure that they could afford to meet the demand?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
I welcome that approach. I can see how that would be more sensible than getting someone into homelessness or finding them when they are homeless and dealing with the issue at that point. That is helpful.
We spoke a little bit about Ukraine. Have you considered the impact of people from Ukraine on the matter?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Good morning to the cabinet secretary and her officials. I will pick up on a couple of the themes that we have heard about so far.
Since 2019, in Glasgow, the unsuitable accommodation order has been breached 220 times. Will that be monitored as a result of bringing in the suspension?
