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 1347 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
You will come back to the Parliament in two or three weeks’ time with your budget. I think that last week’s United Kingdom budget will have resulted in some Barnett consequentials. I appreciate that it is early days yet—less than a week—but is there any mitigation from those Barnett consequentials that means that the cut or reduction, whichever word you want to use, might not have to take place?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you. I will be interested in seeing what comes next week.
Last week, many of our witnesses said that there was no openness and transparency in the setting of last year’s budget. Engagement was lacking, and we did not get the information that we required. Do you agree that additional information will be helpful when engaging in the budget process as we look forward to next year?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
That is helpful, and I agree with your analysis of the situation. As we come out of Covid, the issue is that the number of disabled people who are unemployed has gone up compared with the pre-Covid figure, and that is true across many other parts of the world, so it is not just a Scottish issue. However, the percentage of disabled people who are unemployed is now much higher in Scotland than it is, for example, in England. My concern is that those who are particularly disabled and want to get back into employment will not get those services. Is it your analysis that the figure is likely to grow higher and that more disabled people will be unemployed in the next six to nine months because they are not getting the holistic support that they need to get into employment?
08:15Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I have just couple of questions, Deputy First Minister. How did you make the decision to cut that budget, and what effect will it have on encouraging people to use public transport rather than their cars?
08:30Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I will pick up on the new youth concessionary travel scheme. I say this as somebody who is a non-driver and who therefore uses the bus a lot: it amazes me how many children in Edinburgh are still not using the scheme. They are putting their fare in and paying for the bus.
One reason for that is that the scheme is quite complicated to apply for; I say that as somebody who tried to get it three times for my children. There is variation across Scotland in how to apply and how easy it is to apply. I wonder, not necessarily for this project, but looking forward, whether the Scottish Government could make applying for the scheme easier. The issue concerns me, particularly as people who struggle to get access to the internet or do not have a passport are not necessarily picking up on the scheme. They may be the people who need the scheme more than those who have already applied for it.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I want to get a bit more detail on how the £82 million was going to be used in the first place. I am not sure that I could find that information within anything that has come to us. What was it going to be used for?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
If I can push on that a wee bit, Deputy First Minister, I am not sure that I understand yet what that £82 million was going to be used for. I appreciate that the money goes into a big pot, and you described how that pot is spent. However, it is hard for the committee and the Parliament to know the intended purpose if we do not know how the £82 million was going to be spent. For example, was it for social security or education? Presumably, you had allocated £82 million to a particular Government department or budget. Where is that money coming from?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I will push on that a wee bit. I think that what you suggest is all very sensible but it is only the best medium-term solution. My question is—given that I do not think that using a boat is a solution for anything except for an extremely short period of time—do you think that there is a short-term answer to the problem?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you for making the time to speak to us this morning. To follow on from Pam Duncan-Glancy’s questions, what will be the practical effects with regard to the employability budget reduction? You said that there is an increase in the budget and that the changes will not affect services that are being provided. I am trying to work out what the extra £56 million was planned to do, if its absence is not going to affect direct services.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, gentlemen. I will go back to Pam Duncan-Glancy’s previous questions about the legislation that will be introduced next week. I appreciate that we do not yet know the details of the legislation—we will see it, I think, an hour before the committee sits. Obviously, there might be more issues in Edinburgh and Lothian, but I have a number of constituents who have buy-to-let properties, so their mortgages are being paid by the rent payments that they receive. With mortgage payments possibly now going up because of inflation and interest rates, are you concerned that those people will have to withdraw their properties from the market? One of the other unforeseen circumstances could be that there is less housing available for rent, because people cannot meet their mortgage payments.
