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 1895 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
On the requirements that you listed, are you at the table and having those conversations now?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
That is what I was keen to explore next. The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice spoke last week about moving from the discovery phase of the programme to day-to-day business. We know that policy innovations come along—for example, the announcement in the budget about the two-child limit and the delivery of a payment with regard to that. You are closing one programme and that has come along, so how do you intend to prepare for that? What do you think the challenges will be in trying to move to the business as usual space?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
On building the system, we know that there has been a lot of debate and conversation in the past few weeks about the need for DWP to transfer data and the interaction between the two Governments. What is your role in that and what do you require to be prepared to build the system that will ultimately deliver whatever the policy intent is?
09:45Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
On the point about building capability, horizon scanning and preparedness, the Government policy on the two-child limit was sent to the Scottish Fiscal Commission a week and a day before the budget was introduced. When was Social Security Scotland made aware that it might have to deliver that innovation?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. David Wallace’s introduction was very helpful in setting some of the context. We are interested, first, in the operational challenges of taking on the remaining functions of the current programme. In particular, what progress has been made on reducing the risk score of bringing the project to its closure?
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the development of the changing places toilet fund. (S6O-04201)
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
I thank the minister for that answer and the previous answers to which she refers.
According to PAMIS—Promoting a More Inclusive Society—when the funding was initially announced in 2021, the average cost of equipment for a changing places toilet ranged from £12,000 to £17,000. The minister will be aware that significant rises in construction costs and the costs of equipment over many years have vastly increased the overall cost of building a changing places toilet.
The Government has caused delays. There has been repeated reprofiling of the fund, which has caused exasperation for disabled people, as the minister has heard and well knows, and it is clear that projects across the country now cost more money and that the fund has been devalued.
Has the Government done any analysis of how many projects it would expect £10 million to fund? How many fewer projects might there be as a result of the delays around the issue?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. I want to follow up on the commissioner piece that we have been discussing. The committee will seek to influence colleagues and help to shape some of what is looked at within that, and it is important that we give the various stakeholders the opportunity to do that. My sense, from the discussion, is that we want to take a broader look beyond the mechanics of commissioners and the financial implications. Angela O’Hagan’s points about the root-and-branch approach are important.
We have heard—because we have a duty to consider commissioners’ proposals, which often come before us—that access to justice is missing. We have touched on that already today. Do you want to see your piece of work on access to justice for everyone form the basis of conversations and recommendations within that wider piece of work? Do you want to highlight, on the record, anything specific in that at this stage?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Scottish Human Rights Commission
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
That is helpful to the committee in thinking about how we engage. I am grateful.
Meeting of the Parliament
Winter Heating Payment
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Paul O'Kane
I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of the statement. The cabinet secretary and colleagues have said much in recent weeks about the impact of winter pressures and cold temperatures, but today’s statement appears to be old numbers put together in a new way to suggest that the Scottish Government is taking action on those issues; perhaps that is why it was pre-briefed to the media.
I want to ask the cabinet secretary about this, because we have had this conversation in the chamber before. Scottish Labour has been calling for a package of measures to support people this winter from that £41 million consequential that the Scottish Government received from the household support fund, which the cabinet secretary said did not exist. Instead, the cabinet secretary seems to have announced simply the plugging of gaps that were created by real-terms cuts in the previous budget. We have had no detail since that statement on the practical measures to deploy the funding. Will the cabinet secretary therefore outline how much of that funding is already out of the door and how many people it is supporting?
Finally, the cabinet secretary is aware that we have called for those consequentials to be used to reinstate the fuel insecurity fund as an alternative mechanism to target those who are most in need. Freedom of information responses have shown that, when the Government made the decision to cut that fund, fuel insecurity partners expressed great concern that they could no longer
“deliver innovative measures that were taking people out of crisis situations”.
Does the cabinet secretary agree that that move was regrettable? Will she confirm whether the Scottish Government has looked at the option to revive that fund in line with calls from this side of the chamber and campaigners?
