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 1306 contributions
|
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Just before Christmas, the committee took evidence from David Wallace of Social Security Scotland. One of the issues that came up was the processing time. The charter contains a 10-day processing time measure, which he said would be “incredibly challenging” to meet. It was clear that he felt that, moving forward, that would not be met consistently. This will feed into my final question in a moment. Are you going to look at that timescale? There is presumably no point in having a timescale that nobody is ever going to hit.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
That would be helpful.
I suspect that I know the answer to this next question, but I will ask it anyway. There was quite a long debate when the Social Security (Scotland) Bill was going through Parliament on whether the charter should have statutory or legal authority. As a Parliament, we decided against that. Will the review look at that aspect to see whether the charter should be given some statutory context?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Cabinet secretary, you will appreciate that I have asked you and the finance secretary on a number of occasions about specific discussions that you have had with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations on three-year funding. I know from previous answers that you and your officials regularly meet the SCVO. Has three-year funding been discussed specifically with the SCVO? What on-going discussions with the organisation are planned on that issue?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I have a final question on this area. As you will be aware, the customer charter has to be renewed in January next year, and you will obviously go through a consultation process in that regard. Do you know when the committee will be able to scrutinise any alterations or changes to the charter before it is laid before Parliament? Will you give a guarantee that there will be an opportunity for the committee to take evidence on any such changes before that happens?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
As you mentioned, voluntary organisations are funded not only through your budget but through budgets across different Government portfolios. What efforts are made across Government to adopt the fair funding practice that SCVO has outlined? Who co-ordinates that to ensure that organisations do not miss out on funding from one department because they already get money from another department? Is that co-ordinated by the finance team or within your department?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, minister, and happy new year to you and your team.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I will pick up on a point that has been made by my colleagues. As you know, this is the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, so we consider delegated powers. As you know, regulations cannot be altered—we can only vote for or against them. Therefore, if Parliament likes three quarters of what you have done but does not like the rest of it, we are left with the option of saying no completely or voting for something that we do not have confidence in. If MSPs cannot amend regulations, how does that give them democratic accountability?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I do not want to labour the point, but I think that you hit the nail on the head in your previous answer. No one here is at all critical of stakeholder engagement, consultation and co-design. I think that we all welcome it, and everyone thinks that that is a great way forward. However, as you said, the issue is that, ultimately, decisions will have to be made. You cannot let everybody have exactly what they want, because those things will conflict. The issue for the committee is why you think that, once you have done all that consultation, once you have had that open door and once you have all discussed the subject, it is appropriate for the Scottish Government to decide which view to take on board, rather than the Scottish Parliament doing the same listening exercise and then coming to a view.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I absolutely accept that, but the trouble is that we do not know what the complaints system will look like—we have no idea, because you have not had your co-design meetings. I do not understand why you could not have had them already or even have them now, come up with a scheme that has consensus among the stakeholders and put that in the bill.
As you pointed out, even with all your consultation, there will be people who are not happy with your final recommendation. I am still struggling to work out why that recommendation should not be in the bill so that MSPs can decide whether it will work. You seem to be asking us to accept that you will get it absolutely right.
I have a second question on that. In one of your previous answers to me, you mentioned that there are other ways in which the Parliament can deal with secondary legislation rather than just saying yes or no to it. I am not aware of them. Will you explain them further to me, please?
