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
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning to the minister and his team. I have a couple of questions. First, when David Phillips, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, gave evidence to the committee, he talked about a “cliff edge” for some families, who fear losing out on their eligibility for SCP if they take on extra hours of work. I presume that now is the right time to go into it. What work are you and your team doing on that? What mitigation is there around that and what thinking is being done?
Secondly, I go back to Pam Duncan-Glancy’s question, to which I do not think that I heard an answer. Once ADP is fully transferred and is being run by Social Security Scotland, do you intend to increase that benefit as you have increased the other benefits that are now being run by the agency? Once all the transfers have taken place, do you see a further increase happening, or do you see the amount staying aligned with the UK figure?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Case Transfer
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I am on PIP at the moment. How much notice will be given to people of when they will be transferred to ADP? It is quite a long time. Is transfer being carried out geographically or alphabetically? How much notice will people be given that they are transferring from the DWP to the new agency?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Case Transfer
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
When will detailed guidance on case transfer from PIP to ADP be published? Do you have a date for publishing it?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Case Transfer
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
We live and breath this day in, day out, but there are lots of people out there who want that reassurance, so that is really helpful.
Could I seek clarification? You helpfully said that people who have long-term conditions will not have to go through the same assessment period for PIP as they do at the moment under the DWP. When people are transferred, if they are, say, two years away from a review, will they be told that that review will not need to take place? How will you make that decision about those who are already on PIP and are coming up for a review two or three years down the road? Will they be told at that point that the review will not take place or will that happen once everybody has been transferred?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I am conscious of time, and I understand that this is a big issue, so I ask David Phillips to put some of his answer to us in writing. My specific question for him is whether any future divergence in benefit criteria can be reflected in the negotiations. If, in a year or 18 months, the Scottish Government or Parliament decides to change the mobility requirement to, say, 50m rather than 20m, with the result that many more people would be entitled, should that be reflected in the fiscal framework now, or is it simply impossible to do that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I am trying to work out where that £2.7 million is coming from. Was it sitting there for a rainy day or was it allocated for a different purpose until it was transferred, probably quite rightly, to the uprating of the benefits? How much flexibility do you have in your budget for that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning. We will look at the relaid regulations on 31 March, which is fine. In order that we can look ahead and do the appropriate planning, however, I have a question about the increase to the benefits. I presume that the cost will be met from the Scottish Government budget, rather than from what has already been planned. Where is the money coming from? Will it come from the social security budget that has been approved by Parliament or from a different department’s budget? When we passed the budget, Kate Forbes told us that every penny had been accounted for and all the money would be spent. This is obviously extra money that was not in the budget. Where is it coming from?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I am happy for Emma Congreve to start, if she wants to.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Okay—that is helpful. It is interesting to think about whether there could be timed tapering.
My final question is on the fiscal framework, which is a mystery to most of us. Obviously, negotiations are going on around the framework between the UK Government and the Scottish Government. How important is social security in the negotiations? If you were advising the Scottish Government, what would you tell it to ask for?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I have two questions, the first of which is aimed at David Phillips. I was interested in the issue of tapering with regard to some benefits. Can you point us to any evidence of tapering in other parts of the world with regard to things like personal independence payments and the disability living allowance that we could consider with regard to new benefits in Scotland? There has been quite a lot of research that shows that people ask why they should get better if they are going to lose their benefits. For example, if regaining the ability to walk 20m or 25m means that a person could lose their car, they might ask what would be the benefit of them getting any better? Is there any evidence of tapering across the world with regard to things like PIP, which we could look at in Scotland?
