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 1055 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
Given what you have said about the Scottish Government’s investment in whole-family wellbeing and employability services, do you expect the poverty rate for lone parent families to decrease over the period in trying to meet those targets?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
I know that colleagues will talk about data and that we have already spoken about the child payment—I think that we are all agreed on its importance and on some of the anecdotal evidence that has been raised—but I have a final question under this theme on the modelling that the Government is using.
A year ago, many of your colleagues—and, I think, you, as the cabinet secretary—were speaking about 100,000 children being lifted out of poverty. That was shown not to be the case. I think that the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Government in that regard. The figure was then corrected to 60,000 children being kept out of poverty, and we are now at a figure of 40,000 children being kept out of poverty. Will you clarify whether the 40,000 figure is the accurate one in the Government’s view? How certain are you of the modelling that you are now using to establish that figure? Everyone around the table wants to make sure that we are dealing with accuracy, because it is such an important policy.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
On the Scottish Government’s policy on the two-child limit and the background work that has been done on that, we have had a lot of conversation this morning about the need to take decisions over a period of time. The two-child limit was brought in in 2017, and the Government’s policy was that it was not going to mitigate the impact of the limit because it said that it could not. It then introduced the policy that we are discussing this morning, and the cabinet secretary gave figures on the modelling on the impact that that will have on Scotland.
I have asked a number of times when the policy decision was made by the Government. I asked at committee when we originally discussed the proposal, and I know that the finance secretary was asked at the Finance and Public Administration Committee when that decision was made. I have had to ask parliamentary questions, and I have made freedom of information requests, but I cannot get an answer to exactly when the decision was made. It is important in the context of understanding what work on the issue was being done prior to that decision. Will the cabinet secretary put on the record when she took the decision and, if she is not willing to do that, will she say why she is not willing to do that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
So, you are not going to say when you took the decision to—
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
With respect, you have not, because you have not given me the date on which you took the decision. I am interested in what work was done prior to that, given that the Government spent a long time saying that it could not take action. If you can give me a date, that would be really helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
The cabinet secretary has made that point to me many times, and that is her view. However, she does not support any of the revenue-raising measures that the UK Government has taken, including the changes to national insurance, the changes to inheritance tax and the levy on energy companies, so I am keen to understand whether she has any suggestions about how the UK Government should raise revenue.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
The Government has six priority groups for the action that it is taking to reduce poverty. Are you concerned that, among all those groups bar one, child poverty is going up? In particular, it has gone up by 4 percentage points among ethnic minority households in the past decade, it has gone up by 5 percentage points among lone parent households and it has gone up by 8 percentage points among households with a baby under one. The Scottish Government has extensive powers to support lone parents and women into work, so do you recognise that there has been a failure in that regard?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
With respect, the cabinet secretary would acknowledge that the Scottish Government has not produced a medium-term financial strategy for quite some time.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
Growth is increasing.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Eradicating Child Poverty
Meeting date: 29 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. Cabinet secretary, when your party came to power, relative child poverty was at 23 per cent after housing costs were taken into account. Last year, as we have heard, the figure was 22 per cent, so there has been a 1 percentage point fall in 18 years. The Government’s child poverty summary says:
“in recent years, both relative and absolute child poverty have shown little consistent change”.
Do you accept that that is perhaps just a polite way of saying that you have not moved the dial in 18 years?
