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 1574 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Michael Marra
As bodies that are involved in the dispensation and use of secure accommodation services, are you concerned that capacity in secure accommodation and residential care might be impacted by cross-border placements in that the number of available bed spaces might be reduced? Your organisations are involved in sending young people into such places. Does the capacity issue concern you?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Michael Marra
In recent years, the Scottish Government has had a policy to fund a last-bed provision in secure accommodation. Kenny, you mentioned an issue to do with finding capacity. However, I am told that there is some dubiety as to whether that policy will be continued. Would it concern your organisations if that last-bed provision to find a place for a person was not continued?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Michael Marra
That is useful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Michael Marra
There is a fair amount of commentary there about communication and the right to information. In this area, I am particularly concerned about child victims of child crime.
Will you give us your reflections on the management of relationships? Many of the victims will be living in the same communities as children who are the perpetrators of crimes, who might end up going to the same school or living in the same street as the victims of what are sometimes very serious crimes. How are those processes managed, and can more be done to achieve better outcomes? I ask Katy to start.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Michael Marra
I accept that we do not want that to happen, but can you address my point about the cross-border placements?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Michael Marra
Are there concerns in your organisations that some of the institutions may be becoming reliant on cross-border placements for their financing? The committee has heard in other evidence that many people are concerned about and critical of the situation in the regime south of the border. We have heard that, frankly, it is right for Scotland to offer safe havens for some of the young people concerned but that there may be an issue to do with the finances of some of the institutions. Have your organisations reflected on that? Do you have any concerns about it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Michael Marra
Certainly.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Michael Marra
My questions are on cross-border placements, which the bill seeks to regulate. Perhaps the representative from each organisation could speak to the complexities and challenges that it faces in managing the processes for such placements. By that I mean those that cover, for example, young people whose cases are disposed of in England or Wales but who end up living in secure or supported accommodation in Scotland.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Michael Marra
The adjustment is to the threshold for obtaining free school meals. I wonder why we are not adjusting income thresholds more substantially, in line with inflation. Has the Government considered that, given the challenges that families face? I am concerned about the threshold for access. Will the committee consider making representations to the Government about that?
09:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Michael Marra
The Government is preparing the strategy that we have talked about and, clearly, there will be costs associated with delivering that strategy to transform outcomes in transitions. In your meetings with ministers, did they outline what they thought the costs of that would be in a way that would be comparable with the costs that you have outlined?
