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 2291 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Homelessness
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Miles Briggs
The responsibility for housing lies with the member’s party and the Scottish Government. That is what this debate is all about.
Tragically, last year, we saw one of the highest numbers of deaths among people experiencing homelessness. Since the SNP Government took office, it has failed to meet all of its home-building targets. There is little hope of the situation improving, given that John Swinney’s most recent budget outlined an additional £170 million cut in the housing budget. Shelter Scotland said:
“We are deeply concerned at the significant 16% cut to the housing budget in 2023/24, which has the potential to completely derail the Scottish Government’s ability to reduce housing need in this parliamentary term.”
On top of that, the Government’s policy interventions have been counterproductive in the housing sector and will be damaging for tenants in the long term by ultimately reducing private rental stock, which will lead to housing developments being paused or shelved. It all adds up to a perfect storm, and it cannot be allowed to continue.
In Scotland today, every 18 minutes a household becomes homeless. Last year, in Scotland, 13,945 households were living in temporary accommodation, with 14,372 children being made homeless last year. That needs to change, and it starts with ministers accepting that they have failed to deliver solutions over the 15 years that they have been in office.
The housing emergency in Scotland has never been about houses; it is about people. It is about the young family that is renting a run-down flat and wondering whether they will ever be able to afford a home of their own. It is about the record number of children in Scotland today who are living in emergency temporary accommodation, forced to change schools every time that they move. It is about the failure of the SNP-Green Government to meet its affordable home targets. It is about the need for a Scottish Government that, at the very least, acknowledges the housing emergency and the need for an all-Government approach to start developing solutions.
The housing policy decisions taken by the SNP-Green Government are making the housing emergency in Scotland worse. It is time for it to pause and reflect on the fact that Scotland faces a housing emergency. It is also time for the Parliament to act collectively to save lives and to work to give everyone in Scotland the safe homes that they deserve.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises the large number of homeless people in Scotland, people in temporary accommodation and people on social housing waiting lists; expresses particular concern at the number of vulnerable people in these categories, such as veterans, children and disabled people, and calls on the Scottish Government to declare a homeless emergency and to prioritise finding suitable accommodation for people in need.
15:11Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Miles Briggs
I have raised the issue of temporary accommodation consistently with you, and you are right to point out that those recommendations are due shortly. That is likely to be after the budget is passed in Parliament, so will additional funding then be made available specifically for that and any policy changes that I hope will be brought forward?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Good morning to you, cabinet secretary, and your officials.
In its submission to the committee, Shelter said:
“Freezing funding for homelessness services and cutting funding for the delivery of new social homes is not in line with the Scottish Government’s international obligations to progressive realisation of rights.”
How do you respond to that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Miles Briggs
I am not going to rehearse the arguments made in the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee about the funding that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities highlighted concerns about, but there is concern about where homelessness could be lost in translation as a result of services being funded through joint partnerships. The Government is proposing to introduce homelessness prevention legislation and homelessness-specific funding. How will the cabinet secretary ensure that that funding will go towards delivering on those priorities at the local level?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Further to the answers that you have given to Willie Coffey and Paul McLennan, COSLA has outlined its concerns about where the national care service currently sits. With all the budget pressures that you have outlined, there is an opportunity to pause to look at the national care service, to allocate the resources attached to it now to local government so that the funding goes to the front line now when it is not being otherwise used, and to look again at what is happening with the policy.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Allotments
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Good morning, minister and officials, and thank you for joining us. You have already outlined where you think the committee’s work can make a difference but, specifically, does the Scottish Government intend to review the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, including part 9, to take on board some of the issues that we have raised?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Good morning, cabinet secretary, and good morning to your officials.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Miles Briggs
Thank you for that. It is something that the committee is keen to monitor and will return to quite early on.
You have already touched on the rent freeze policy. The committee has heard concerns that local housing associations across the country are rewriting their business plans. What impact assessment has taken place of the below-inflation increase in the social rented sector and how that has destabilised them? The committee welcomes the fact that the sector has now been removed from the policy, but the committee had suggested that it should not have been there in the first place and that it needed to be taken out.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Miles Briggs
There will be a bit of a stalemate if COSLA is not willing to bring that forward.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Miles Briggs
I want to move on to local government budget allocations and the financial challenges that local authorities are reporting. You touched on what the Government argues is a £570 million cash increase for local government. This is a game that we seem to play in every single budget, but COSLA is adamant that, when we take into account all the policy commitments that the Scottish Government has put on to local authorities, that increase is £71 million. Do you accept that?
