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
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
That is helpful.
My final question is for Paul Bradford and Martin Tyson and concerns the sustained funding. There is now a three-year funding approach from the UK Government. Do you have any indication that that kind of approach will be transferred to the funding arrangements that you will get from the Scottish Government?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
What could the Parliament and the Government do to support the third sector to make sure that we maintain jobs in the sector and ensure fair work practices?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you for your submissions and for joining us. I would like to put on record again my thanks for the work that you have all done, particularly in the past year and a half, which I know has been a really difficult time for the sector. I appreciate the work that you do.
My first questions are for Myles Fitt. In your latest data, you have noted a 138 per cent increase in visits to your mental health web pages. Why do you think that is? What are you hearing through your bureaux? Could you tell us a bit about the model that is being used to deliver services online or by phone, and the importance of a hybrid approach, if, indeed, that is what you are hoping to do going forward?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you for your responses so far, which have been helpful.
Could you tell us a bit about the recovery fund that went to specific local authorities? Are you aware of how that money was delivered and distributed? What were the criteria? When the additional local authorities were made eligible for that funding, do you know whether additional funding followed that or was the original amount spread out further? I would like to hear from Ian Bruce and Eoin MacNeil on that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
I am pleased to hear that the things that were put in place were positive and I hope that they will continue, because it shows that we can do things differently and be very fleet of foot when we need to be. It is encouraging to hear that.
The question that I have is specifically on the resilience fund, the local authorities that were initially able to access it and the additional 10 local authorities that were able to access it subsequently. Kaja Czuchnicka, are you aware of how they were chosen? Did the funding go to the areas where it was needed the most? When the additional 10 local authorities were added, did that come with additional funding or was it a case of spreading the initial funding slightly differently?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Sorry. I mean the communities recovery fund.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Does anyone else on the panel want to comment?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Thank you for joining us and for providing your submissions in advance—the submissions are incredibly helpful. I also put on record my thanks to the third sector for everything that those involved in it have done—this year in particular, but also beforehand. Having spent a number of years of my working life in the third sector, I know how hard those in it work and how important it is.
It is clear to me from some of the evidence that we have received that the impact of the past year on not just the services that you deliver but jobs in the sector, including those that you are able to create, has been significant. You note that some organisations have been struggling and have had to make some painful operating decisions. Could you tell us a little bit about that and about redundancies and how many jobs you think could have been affected by the pandemic over the past year and a half?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Third Sector Recovery
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
My questions are for Myles Fitt and Ian Bruce. You will be aware that a number of citizens advice bureaux in Glasgow faced funding difficulties in the past year or so. Can you tell us about the impact of that and about the importance of resourcing such organisations? Given the UK Government’s changing approach to a three-year funding settlement, do you have any indication from local or central Government in Scotland that they will seek to transfer that approach to your organisations, notwithstanding the fact that three years is good but more would be better?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Women’s Unfair Responsibility for Unpaid Care and Domestic Work
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Pam Duncan-Glancy
It is important that we get right under the skin of the issue not only because what you have said about the UN’s warning about women’s equality, but because of the impact that the situation is having on women, as we all see in our constituencies every day. We need to get ahead of the issue, so thanks for helping us to do that.
My questions are around the impact on unpaid care. I have spoken to a number of unpaid carers, before the pandemic and since, and their stories are bleak and can be pretty grim. Will you tell us a bit about your assessment of the impact of the pandemic on unpaid carers? Can you also cover the impact that the reduction in health and social care services has had on people’s expectation that women will do unpaid care? Are there any particular groups of women—for example, younger women, disabled women and lone parents—who have, in your experience, ended up doing more of that unpaid care as a result of services shutting down and so on?
