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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1347 contributions
|
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning to you and your team, cabinet secretary. I will follow up on a couple of my colleague’s comments. I do not want to keep this Edinburgh-centric, but most people in Edinburgh who are in temporary accommodation are there for two years. Will you clarify whether somebody who makes an application goes on to a temporary accommodation list or whether they jump the list and go straight into accommodation, which is obviously very scarce in Edinburgh?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I think so, yes. However, I am not sure why we have gone down the road of suspension rather than removal. I did not quite understand the answer. Will you elaborate slightly on that? Why not just remove the test completely?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
On a more general point, if I read the regulations right, this is a suspension rather than a removal. Why have you gone down that road, and how long do you intend the suspension to last? Are you doing it because you want to do a further review, or is it a suspension that will go on for 20 years because everyone has forgotten that it was supposed to be a suspension?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
That is helpful.
I have a final question. The committee has been grappling with the issue of data collection around all areas. I think that the cabinet secretary referred to it in her opening statement, but will she expand on how the data is collected and monitored and whether it will be published in a public way so that we can see how the change is working over a three-year or five-year period?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
If I lived in Blackpool, or wherever, down in England and I had a local connection with Inverness, would this not apply to me? Is it not correct to say that, if I lived outwith a Scottish local authority area, I could not use this even if I had a very strong connection with an area in Scotland?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I appreciate that the numbers are, relatively, very low, but two years is a very long time to be in temporary accommodation while waiting for a permanent house. How many of the people you have looked at previously would go into temporary accommodation and how many would go into a more permanent place?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Just to clarify that point, have we reached an agreement? Has the Scottish Government reached an agreement with the UK Government on the matter? Are you still waiting to hear back from the Scotland Office?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, minister, and good morning to your team. I want to look at something in relation to financial instruments that was in the draft bill and has been taken out. I know that you are working with the United Kingdom Government to use a section 104 order to extend the bill’s provisions. Can you tell us why it would not be appropriate for that to be in the bill and why you think that it has to be done through Westminster?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Can I push you slightly on that, minister? It is clear that, if you get four lawyers into a room, you get 12 different opinions, but there is a lot of legal opinion that including the provision would be competent. Could you give us a wee bit more information on why you have come to the view that it is not competent?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Jeremy Balfour
On both those points, if we were to get a response before the stage 1 report comes out and before the Parliament debate takes place, that would be helpful and would allow us to reflect. If you could do that by correspondence, that would be helpful.
