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 1489 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
The area that I am interested in has been touched on already, but I am keen to dig a little more, as it involves the nub of my concerns, which are to do with the range of work that is undertaken by social work and children’s services and whether the national care service will focus predominantly or too much on the care issue.
Fiona Duncan, as you mentioned that issue, can you illustrate the breadth of areas that your social work colleagues deal with, beyond and including the issues of care?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
I will reflect on some of the frustrations that you have expressed—as a Dundonian, I have certainly observed them—about the fact that the city council puts money into the IJB and then takes it out to plug its own financial black hole, which means that you cannot plan for services and there are problems with the money. You have expressed that challenge well.
On the model that you have postulated, would we not be looking at just replicating some of that, perhaps with the involvement of a third agency, if you were looking at bringing in children’s services and there was to be a whole other budget for that? Is it your suggestion that we pull all of that together? Is the logical conclusion of your model not to also bring education into the picture?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
We are being asked to agree to a major change by passing this framework bill. Essentially, we would be approving things in principle, with the model to follow afterwards. I recognise that it is challenging to imagine what that process might look like.
We have just touched on the Promise and the Feeley review. What evidence have the witnesses seen marshalled to support the change that we as a Parliament are being asked to approve? What is the evidence base for moving children’s services? I will start with Ross McGuffie.
11:00Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
Jude, do your members know what is happening? Do they know that pensions are not included in TUPE regulations arrangements—there is no clarity on that—and that they could be moving employer to a completely new body with no indication of what might happen?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
Allow me to interrupt—I am sorry; I do not mean to be rude, but it is challenging to intervene when someone is online.
The list of proposed activities includes dealing with issues of fostering, whole-family support, kinship care relating to children, early intervention work through partnering with education services and so on. Those are not things that you currently do, are they?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
I suppose that what I am getting at is that your members will be under pressure to close cases. Indeed, they are regularly under that pressure, because managers keep saying that there are too many cases and that they need to reduce the case load. Is there a risk that what we are talking about will accelerate that process? After all, Martin Crewe has described it as the Cinderella service.
According to the figures that we can see, the set-up cost for the national care service is currently looking like it will be £1.3 billion. That money will not be spent on your services; it is just for set-up costs. Yesterday, the STUC and trade unions called for the whole programme to be stopped. That is the situation that your members, Jude, and your service deliverers, Martin, would be walking into. It just feels like a big risk to what you are doing right now.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
It just strikes me that I cannot see the Government doing the same thing to doctors. It would not say to an entire profession, “We’re going to change your employment rights, put in place a bill that allows us to do that and then pass it.” However, the Government is prepared to do it to social workers.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
I am interested in the area that both Jude Currie and Martin Crewe have just talked about. Should the organising principle of a national care service not be the provision of care? However, the sort of thing that you have described to the committee this morning is about keeping young people away from care. Is there not a culture risk in trying to integrate what you do with an adult national care service?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Michael Marra
That was very useful. Is it the case that, because of reducing resource and a lack of partners to refer on to, prevention has become much more difficult and that the work of your members is being taken up with permanence issues, referrals to care and child protection issues?
