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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 994 contributions
|
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
Okay.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
Thanks for those responses.
The policy memorandum speaks about workforce, employment and contractual arrangements being the subject of secondary legislation, which includes the potential transfer of staff from local authorities. Would it be fair to say that at no point did the Government approach you and say that there is the potential in the bill for 75,000 staff to transfer, and that that might involve a TUPE process?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
Thanks for those responses. Alison, in your answer to the convener’s initial question, you spoke about there being a level of ambivalence towards the bill and about people’s concerns about leaving things to secondary legislation and the changes that will impact on existing legislation, particularly in the social work space. Are you concerned that leaving things to secondary legislation narrows the scrutiny in terms of what is debated in the Parliament, with everyone having their say—are you nervous about that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
In the process leading up to the bill’s introduction and in our scrutiny thus far, there has been a lot of discussion about the importance of parity of esteem between the NHS and social care. Is there sufficient clarity about what that might look like? The question is perhaps for Alison Bavidge and Colin Poolman, but Sharon Wiener-Ogilvie might want to contribute, as well—I am sure that all the panellists will be keen to answer.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
We have heard a lot of evidence on this area and on the known unknowns, if you like, around it in the bill. What is your view on the Scottish Government’s approach in the bill on giving Scottish ministers powers to transfer functions? First, what does that mean for staff morale? Secondly, what are the main concerns of staff?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
Would it have been better to give people certainty in the bill, or not do it all, as the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities thinks?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
Kay McVeigh comes from a personnel and development background. What is your sense of what the bill needs to do? We have just had a conversation about what is not in the bill. Regardless of that process, what key actions are needed to drive that parity, particularly from a local authority point of view?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
I have a brief follow-up question. Much discussion of costs has taken place in recent weeks, in this committee and other committees that are scrutinising the proposed legislation. Are you concerned about the cost of transferring the staff in setting up new services? Is that a worry for local authorities?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
Is there a danger in legislating for a national care service before we have the detail of that review? Should those aspects have been in the bill in the first place?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Paul O'Kane
Thank you, convener. I have two questions, but they will be directed to individual witnesses.
I will begin with Patricia Cassidy’s comments. I am looking for a bit more clarity about where chief officers are on a number of issues. In many of the submissions that we received from local authorities, IJBs and health and social care partnerships, concern was expressed about what disruption to services will do to integration. Angus HSCP said that
“Significant work has gone into the establishment of IJBs”,
and that a national care service
“could take the focus away from integration and continual improvement”.
East Lothian HSCP said that
“It would be damaging and counterproductive to restructure services again, less than eight years since the integration of H&SC.”
Are chief officers of the view that there needs to be structural change to the care boards, or is there a sense that there is not enough detail in the bill to make a judgment about whether we should move towards that and about what the change would look like?
