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 1221 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Liz Smith
—the older generation.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Liz Smith
Indeed.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Liz Smith
Assuming that the amount is positive—I know that there is a lot of debate about that—if the money was spent on teachers or on improving resources in the state sector in England and Wales, am I correct in thinking that Barnett consequentials would flow from that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Liz Smith
Thank you. That was helpful.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Liz Smith
Good morning. I have a point of clarification that follows on from Michael Marra’s question. You made it clear that the Scottish Government has not provided you with a public sector pay policy. Have you expressed concern to the Scottish Government about that? If so, when was that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 3 September 2024
Liz Smith
Yes, it is obviously putting considerable pressure on the social security budget. What about people who are economically inactive and do not have disabilities or health issues? Do you have any idea of the policies that will make a difference to getting them back into the labour market? Obviously that has a huge implication for increasing productivity and, in the long run, economic growth.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 June 2024
Liz Smith
That is a very fair point. I put it on the record that you have been a wonderful champion for disability groups in all their differences.
To finish, I will pick up on the point that the convener raised—that there is potential for considerable overlap in the commissioners that we currently have. Some disabled people are children, and some older disabled people are patients. How would you address the potential for such overlaps, which could be financially as well as administratively difficult?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 June 2024
Liz Smith
May I offer a view in relation to the patient safety commissioner? In my opinion, the demand for that commissioner came about because of failings in health boards. I speak with considerable experience of the Eljamel situation; people affected by that are very clear that they want a patient safety commissioner. That has come about because of failures in a particular health board. To my mind, a commissioner is not necessarily going to solve that problem. You have to go to the root of the problem, which is about the way in which the health board was being run. To reflect on that from the angle of the need for a disability commissioner, are there problems that we could solve about the delivery of public services that do not really need a commissioner but could be addressed through other aspects of the delivery of public services?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 June 2024
Liz Smith
Good morning, Mr Balfour. In looking at the whole question of commissioners, we have looked at those who have a regulatory role, those who are complaints commissioners, those whose role is investigatory and those who are advocacy commissioners. Commissioners have a broad range of roles.
One of the interesting things that the committee is facing is that the increasing demand for commissioners—as in your proposal—relates much more to the advocacy role. That has led us and some witnesses to question whether the demand for advocacy is increasing because the existing public services and facilities that are available to support people are not doing their job adequately. I ask you to reflect on whether that is the case for a proposed disability commissioner—namely, that public services are not looking after disabled people very well. If the answer is that they are not looking after them very well, is that related to cost or to a lack of understanding of the role that they should have—or perhaps both?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 June 2024
Liz Smith
That is a valid point, and constituents in some of my areas in Mid Scotland and Fife have made exactly that point. However, do you think that that difficult scenario—you are quite right to say that, in some cases, that approach means that those in disability groups are housebound for that period—comes about because of a local authority’s failure to address the problem adequately and because of certain cutbacks? Earlier, you mentioned Covid, which, as we all know, has been a particularly difficult period for local authorities with regard to their financial arrangements. The point is whether we can solve those genuine issues by looking at the services that are provided by local authorities and, in some cases, by the Scottish Government, rather than by having a commissioner. That is the key question.
