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 2176 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government Fiscal Arrangements
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Is any more detail available on where public-private partnerships will go in the future, and potential changes? Some councils are looking at their payback terms and things like that. Has any of that been flagged up to you during your investigations?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government Fiscal Arrangements
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. We have talked a few times about the additional resources that were provided because of Covid. Is there anything that you can contribute on lessons that have been learned in that regard, maybe about different service delivery models and whether they have been embedded? The third sector was utilised more during Covid. Has there been a long-term shift in that regard in the delivery of services, given the potential savings?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government Fiscal Arrangements
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Miles Briggs
That was a detailed and helpful answer. Do you think that there is any correlation between councils’ higher net debt levels and their central Government funding levels? Has that been explored? I note that my council—the City of Edinburgh Council—and Aberdeen City Council are the two lowest funded.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government Fiscal Arrangements
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I will ask about local authority net debt, which we know increased by £0.2 billion to £16.4 billion in the financial year 2021-22. Why did that happen? Is there variation in councils around the additional debt level? With regard to public-private partnership agreements specifically, are you aware of any variations that are impacting on debt levels in different councils?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government Fiscal Arrangements
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Miles Briggs
I have one final question. We had the integration of health and social care, the pandemic and now we have what the Government is proposing with the national care service. I know from speaking to councillors from all parties that that has created an environment in which they are not able to look at what has been, what currently is and what they want in the future. Do you think that that is preventing innovation and the capturing of different models that have been successful during the pandemic? Are we preventing those from being embedded now, as we pause while we wait to see what the Parliament will present to councils?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government Fiscal Arrangements
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Looking back to the historic concordat, which the Government used to talk about, is there a model that we have already tried—it has been about freezing council tax previously, rather than about councils raising more income—that could be picked up and which councils have previously signed up to that would work to provide the flexibility at local level that everyone is telling us they want, but which also includes national accountability around outcomes?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Local Government Fiscal Arrangements
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Yes. We have heard about that previously.
10:15Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 26 January 2023
Miles Briggs
The minister will be aware that the Scottish house condition survey pointed towards 14 per cent of social sector homes having issues with either mould or damp. Will the Scottish Government consider putting in place a reporting system to track the issue in the socially rented sector, and might that system also be extended?
Meeting of the Parliament
Homelessness
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Does Emma Roddick realise that both pieces of legislation had to be challenged by bodies outside the Parliament and that the Government has had to delay another piece of legislation by six months because it is unworkable for councils?
Meeting of the Parliament
Homelessness
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Miles Briggs
I do not think that the cabinet secretary’s own colleagues bought what she was saying at committee either, to be quite honest, so we need to make sure that we get more clarity on exactly why the Government thinks a cut is not a cut, when it certainly is.
However, I ask the cabinet secretary this. In relation to this debate, how bad do things have to get in Scotland for you to recognise that there is a homelessness emergency today?
