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
Adult Disability Payment
Meeting date: 16 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
With the first panel, we discussed the issue of people who are presently on DLA and who will come off it when they transfer across. That may affect not only mobility; with regard to those with variable conditions, it might mean that they lose the benefit. Do you know from talking to your members how many people that would affect? Is it a concern? I do not know whether Bill Scott, Keith Park or others have any information on that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
The issue of reserves and how they are held is an interesting one.
I would like to quickly address the theme of the future reform of how charities are regulated, as we have Martin Tyson here. The Government has announced that legislation to reform OSCR and its practice will be introduced this session. As someone who is a trustee of lots of small charities, the system seems to be heavy on paperwork. Martin Tyson, are you conscious that small charities often have to fill in the same amount of paperwork as the large charities? How do we get around that? Perhaps Paul Bradford and others could tell us what reforms they would like to see, from the charities’ perspective.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
My final question is for Paul Bradley. As we come out of this pandemic—hopefully we will do so at some point—do you think that a lot of smaller and medium-sized charities will start merging? Will there be a redefining of the sector because of what has happened in the past two years or will the landscape look fairly similar three years from now?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
That is helpful. I am very conscious of time, so I ask for brief answers to my next question. The issue of your organisations’ relationship with OSCR and the reform of charity law is likely to come up within the next five years. Are there changes that you would like to be made? Is the system overly bureaucratic, in relation to the number of forms that you have to fill in, or is it about right?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
Suzie Burt, how has the relationship been for you, as somebody who has recently started a charity?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I add my thanks for all the work that our witnesses have done. As someone who has worked in the third sector, I acknowledge the pressure that a lot of them are under.
Paul Bradley, going back to last year and the funding that came from the Scottish and UK Governments, I got quite a lot of feedback over the last summer that a lot of the money went to the big charities—the headline charities, which I will not name—while a lot of smaller charities that do more work on the ground struggled to get that money. Is that just whingeing on the part of the small charities or is there any truth behind that? Going forward, how we can get the money to the people who are doing the work, rather than those who might shout loudest?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I have two quick questions. My question to Ian Bruce is similar to one that I put to the other panel. Looking at lessons learned from last year, do you think, from talking with the people you are involved with, that the money that came from the Scottish Government and the UK Government got down to the charities that were dealing with the most need on the ground? Did you hear any stories about funding being blocked by the larger charities or not getting to the people who were actually doing the work?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
It would very helpful if we could get some kind of indication in writing.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
I have two questions, the first of which is procedural. We have touched previously on the time that SCOSS gets to respond. It pointed out in its report that it had a restricted time to get the response done. Are you looking at giving it a longer period of time to consider the recommendations, so that the committee and the Parliament can take that into account?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Security Scotland
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Jeremy Balfour
It is good to see you all here. I will move on to overpayments. We all know that they happen irregularly, but they do happen. When I was a tribunal member, we had to hear some of those cases. It will probably become more of a live issue next year, when adult benefits are transferred. Clearly, we want to keep the founding principles of dignity, respect and so on; at the same time, there are people out there who make fraudulent claims. How will such issues be investigated? What methodology will you use to deal with them?
