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 1769 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Good morning to the panel. Thank you for the information that you gave us in advance, which was very helpful, and thank you for your answers so far.
I have a couple of questions on risk and demand in the social security system. My first one is probably for Emma Congreve. In your submission, you note that the Scottish Government has a policy to increase take-up in benefits. Is it clear from the framework and other documents how it would increase uptake and what the costs and the implications would be?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
That is helpful. Can I ask one more follow-up question, convener?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
My questions are specifically about the child poverty targets. You have said that it is unclear from the medium-term financial strategy or any other document how the Government’s spending choices will enable it to make progress towards meeting those targets. Therefore, it would be helpful if you could set out whether you believe that the Government’s spending choices will enable the child poverty targets to be met, whether they will enable the targets for the specific priority groups to be met and what you expect the Government to do in the spending review in order to meet the child poverty targets.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
First of all, I should correct the record. I said that we got our papers on Thursday, but we got them on Monday. Please forgive me—I was getting confused about which committee papers I was talking about.
I thank the minister for his answer, but I respectfully say to him that I do not think that this is a matter of transferring information from a USB stick. We have had since 2018 to get moving on this, which means that a considerable amount of time has passed. As I know the minister will understand, I understand that the process is complex, but we could have been uprating disability and carers benefits by 6 per cent today. However, we are not, and I just want to mark for the record how unfortunate it is that we have not been able to take that decision, because it means that we are still not delivering those benefits here in Scotland for the people of Scotland.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
It will be short. Thanks; that is helpful.
It is noted that there is not much information about how the social security system can address demand, and in the context that you have just set out, prevention and the way it interacts with other services seems to be important. Can you briefly set out why it is important, what the implications are and what you would expect to see?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Has the minister considered any other ways or mechanisms to apply the equivalence of the 6 per cent uprate to disabled people in Scotland or carers who receive carers allowance in Scotland? Have you looked at any other mechanisms that could be used to get that money into people’s pockets?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you for allowing me to ask a question, convener—I know that I said in advance that I might not have one. I have two questions, if that is okay.
Obviously, we face a considerable cost of living crisis right now, and I believe that the measures are well meaning and the right thing to do. To use a phrase that the IFS witness used earlier, the measures are well meaning but not well designed, given the way that you have done it. I worry slightly that the papers that the committee got last Thursday suggested that you were going to replicate the rates and in some areas were not going to uprate at all. What has changed between last Thursday and today to take you to the decision that you have made? I do not think that it is the wrong decision, but I am keen to know that we are taking decisions properly with robust information and in a considered fashion.
My next question is on the benefits that are still being delivered under agency agreement and that we are being asked to uprate today with CPI, which is 3.1 per cent. I guess that this is not so much a question and more of a statement, but I just want to put it on the record, because it is another frustration of mine. We could have been doing something a bit differently had we been delivering those benefits fully in Scotland. What you intend to do on 31 March in other areas shows what we could have been doing for disabled people and carers if we had not still been using agency agreements.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Probably to both witnesses, but I will not need a question later, if that helps for time.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you; that is helpful.
The Government has indicated that it will begin to review some of the eligibility criteria around the 20m rule this year. When would you expect to see some of the details on the costings for that? What timescale should we be looking at? I am conscious of David Phillips’s answer about when you would expect to see financial decisions as well as policy decisions. It would be good to know what you think about that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you—it does. If there is a review and the Government is serious about changing the policy, I would like to know that the money was available or where the Government was going to get it and how soon we should expect detail on that.
My other questions are for both of you. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy said that she wants to make “intelligent decisions” on social security. Will you set out how that could be done, whether the Government has the data to do it and what the timescales involved in intelligent decision making on social security should be? That is related to the point that we have just spoken about.
