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: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
The witnesses may feel that they have already covered this, but, for completeness, is there any other relevant existing primary legislation that might interact with the bill that needs to be considered?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
I note that Fraser McKinlay is nodding at that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
One of the principal interventions in Dundee, which is my home city—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
We were told that there would be a body of research. Claire, you represent CELCIS, which I believe is to be commissioned to carry out that research. What form will it take?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
Absolutely. I am always happy to talk about Dundee, as my colleagues will confirm.
Dundee City Council has put family support workers into schools. That is not an issue of care—it is not about children being taken into care. Will that practice be put at risk if the whole process is housed in a national organisation that separates itself out from local authorities? Perhaps we can hear from Claire Burns and then Jackie Irvine on that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
That is very useful. Fraser, will you reflect on some of Iain Nisbet’s comments? I can understand how the issues pertain to care and a national care service, but what about the health and wellbeing of a child who is not at risk? Do you see the challenge around protecting those rights in a national care service?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
I should declare an interest, convener, as a close family member is a practising social worker.
Pensions would not typically be included under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, but the fact is that we are looking at thousands of social workers moving to a new body. Has the Government provided any clarity on the status of social work pensions? That question is for Tony Buchanan.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
What about the status of buildings, including the rentals for the places where all those people work? What would the relationship be in that respect with regard to councils?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
But you are not being asked to address directly the question whether children’s services should be integrated.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Michael Marra
CELCIS’s speciality is looked-after children. You have produced some fantastic work in that area, and I give credit to your staff for that. However, my concern in relation to that specialism is whether we can capture the breadth of children’s services that we have touched on in our questions. Is the fact that you have been commissioned to do this research a pointer to a bit of an inherent bias towards the care end of the spectrum rather than the breadth of children’s services?
