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]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
Sure. As I said, I appreciate that responsibility for legal aid sits with the minister’s justice colleagues. Nevertheless, from an equalities point of view, this committee and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee have heard evidence that women who are leaving an abusive relationship very often have to go round 10s and 10s of solicitors to access support. Very often, they miss out on support because of financial thresholds, or because their abusive partner finds a way to intervene to prevent them from accessing that assistance.
Given your equalities brief, do you share the concerns of this committee and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee? What do you view as being your role in helping to drive forward the review in order to make a change? I appreciate what you say about not being able to compel solicitors, but there is clearly a role for the Government to work with SLAB to push that forward.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. The committee is particularly interested in the matter of access to legal aid, and work is being done on that across the Parliament, certainly in committees such as the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. It would be useful to get the minister’s view, first, on work that the Government is undertaking to reform legal aid. There is a short-term piece of work on that, but it is not as broad as people had hoped would be achieved in the Parliament. However, there is a commitment to a longer-term piece of work, which might involve legislative change. The consultation documents that the Government has produced do not seem to cover the issues that we are discussing around financial abuse and domestic abuse more widely. Does the minister see that as a priority, and how is she working to influence a wider review with her justice colleagues?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
I appreciate that, and I have had sight of that paper. Does the minister appreciate, however, that we are in the final furlong of the current session of Parliament and meaningful change will be difficult, and that there is frustration from both the legal profession and people seeking support about the lack of reform? Would she recognise that, in the paper that was published in February, issues in relation to people leaving an abusive relationship and requiring support are not mentioned? Would she recognise her role in ensuring that we do something on those issues as quickly as we can, given the evidence that we are hearing?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
I am conscious that my colleagues have questions, so I will stop there.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
I will broaden the question out to other witnesses, too. In your experience, do councils consider writing off council tax debt for women in particular who are leaving a financially abusive relationship, or are we not seeing enough progress on that at a council level? In addition, in your view, do we need bigger legislative change in order to make that provision?
Erica Young, do you want to comment from a Citizens Advice Scotland point of view?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
United Kingdom Government Welfare Reforms
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
No, convener; I said that I would indicate if I wanted to come in.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
Of course.
That has been a really helpful start to the session, and there is plenty for the committee to consider.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
Kirsty McKechnie, do you want to add anything?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. The first area that is of interest to the committee is about issues around public debt when people are leaving an abusive relationship. We know from the written submissions that Aberlour has carried out a range of work in that area, not least a pilot in Tayside. We are particularly interested in what is good practice and how we ensure consistent good practice in the way in which economic and financial abuse is taken into account when we pursue public debt. I will start with our witness from Aberlour, to get a sense of what you are doing on that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Paul O'Kane
The work in Tayside is definitely interesting. The challenge is that there is a patchy approach across the country, with different local authorities doing different things. From looking at the work that Aberlour is doing, I picked up that there is perhaps a need for a code of practice to codify the approach so that all public bodies are doing similar things and are looking at these issues in the same way.
Have you identified other areas of good practice through your work?
