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 994 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
From a Highland perspective, was there any sense from the people whom you consulted in your membership that things already feel further away from communities? Was there a sense that we need to bring things closer to communities? To tie that to the proposal for care boards, do people want care boards that are more local rather than just a board that is in Inverness or wherever?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
Is it the ALLIANCE’s contention, therefore, that something that is in the control of ministers and on which they are accountable to 128 of us in Parliament would provide more accountability for people than accountability to the local authority? Am I right in thinking that that is what you were saying?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
Thank you, convener, and thanks to the panel for indulging me again.
Co-design is to be at the heart of the process, and, as we understand it, there will be an element of co-design in, if you like, the secondary stages of the bill. Do you feel that that was the right way to go about this, or would you rather have seen more co-design at the front end, before we reached the legislative stage?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
I am interested in the transition from childhood to adulthood, and the associated services. There is a member’s bill on that issue and there are Government bills going through Parliament that relate to a lot of issues that are to do with what we are talking about. Might it be better to capture some of the elements of those bills in this legislation? Is there an opportunity to do that? Frank McKillop and Andy Miller have been close to some of the work on those bills, so I would like them to respond to that first of all.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
Good afternoon. We have had useful opening comments on the general principles of the bill, but I want to ask about what is actually in the bill. It provides for the transfer of accountability from local authorities to the Scottish ministers. What is your view on that concept and on the risks and benefits therein? I ask Mhairi Wylie to start.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
No, convener, I will let Evelyn come in.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
There is a commonality about co-design being part of the process. Andy, what is your vision for the involvement of people with disabilities, and particularly learning disabilities, in co-design? How do we ensure that they are involved?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
Sure. We were talking about the complaints system, and I had noticed that Community Integrated Care said in its submission that responding to a complaint as close as possible to where the issue has occurred, at the local level, is important—I am paraphrasing, obviously. Does Karen Sheridan have a comment on the importance of locality in the complaints procedure?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
We are probably talking about people who would be seen as gatekeepers in the process—those in social work departments, among others, who function as commissioners. Does logic suggest that it would be better for that role to sit with a national body than for it to sit locally?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 December 2022
Paul O'Kane
It is important to pull some of those threads together. Is there an opportunity in the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill to do that? Obviously, it is a Government bill, and we would not want to lose sight of some of those elements that are broadly supported by the learning disability sector and others.
