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 2934 contributions
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COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
John Mason
I do not know about other members, but I am still struggling, I am afraid. I wondered whether the indirect provision could be geographical. Although there was a national restriction for everyone to stay at home, we found during the pandemic that different parts of the country were affected differently. To an extent, individual health boards or local authority education departments could then have a bit of freedom on restrictions. Would that be covered by an indirect provision?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
John Mason
That leads me on to the final area that I would like to consider, which is remote registration of births and deaths. We did not have remote registration of births in the temporary legislation, but that is now being brought in, and you could perhaps say something about that.
We had some evidence that, for registrars and local authority folk, seeing people face to face can make a real difference. For instance, a mother registering the birth of a baby might be unsure whether to have the father’s name there. With vulnerable people who need help and guidance, that might be done better face to face. How will the balance be struck between continuing in-person services and encouraging or allowing remote registration?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
John Mason
Are there enough safeguards in the bill to ensure that, if a local authority began to withdraw an in-person service, it would still have to provide it to some extent?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
John Mason
Moving on to the subject of bankruptcy, we had a fair bit of discussion on the threshold for when someone becomes bankrupt. There was quite a lot of support for the level of £5,000. However, if inflation is 10 per cent, that £5,000 is effectively worth £4,500 after a year, and it is worth £4,000 after another year. I do not know whether the cost of living challenges make any difference to the Government’s thinking. Do you think that £5,000 is the best level?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
John Mason
I welcome the fact that we will not have to wear masks in churches and other places of worship as of Monday. The idea of gradually reducing the requirement for masks is sensible.
My question follows on from what Professor Leitch just said about the three categories. We have 2,300 people in hospital with Covid who span those categories, as I understand it. Is it possible to break down how many people are in hospital because of Covid and how many would have been in hospital anyway but have Covid as well?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
John Mason
That is very helpful.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
John Mason
Could you maybe give me an example of regulations that would indirectly impose restrictions?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
John Mason
Sticking with bankruptcy, there is a question around electronic communications. We have all moved on in that respect during the pandemic. The point was made, however, by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland—of which I am a member—that creditors are perhaps more ready, able and willing to operate in the electronic environment, whereas debtors might not be so much. The suggestion is that we should perhaps consider creditors and debtors differently from that point of view. Even debtors who had been able to communicate electronically might not be able to do so as their financial situation gets worse.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
John Mason
That is helpful, because we are talking about leadership in Scotland, and there is clearly leadership outside the public sector and the voluntary sector. I get that.
I will follow up the convener’s line of questioning. I have always wondered, and continue to wonder, whether some things are just too vague. I know that when you go down the levels you get a bit more detail, but let me give an example.
One of the 11 national outcomes is:
“We are healthy and active”.
I do not see anyone around the table—indeed, there is probably no one in Scotland—saying, “Oh, that is a bad aim. We should not be healthy or active.” Obviously, everyone wants that outcome to be achieved, but people do not talk about it, or at least they do not talk about it in relation to the national performance framework; they just say that we should be healthy and active or whatever. Is there a fundamental problem that the outcomes are too vague?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
John Mason
Okay.
Finally, I want to touch on the ideal, in terms of where we are going. Figure 1 on page 9 of the report talks about budgets. I quite like the idea of having a “Basic” level, then “Progressing” and “Advanced”, and then the ideal, which is called the “Leading Edge”. It mentions
“Budgets additionally shared with other organisations”.
In other words, the leading edge organisations work so closely together that they share their budgets. That is quite an aspiration. Is it practical? Is it happening? Can it happen?
