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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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Item 2 is an evidence-taking session with the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care on the financial memorandum to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. Mr Stewart is joined by the following Scottish Government officials: Donna Bell, director, social care and national care service development; and Fiona Bennett, interim deputy director for national health service, integration and social care finance. I welcome you all to the meeting and invite Mr Stewart to make a short opening statement.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Where would the third sector fit in with those shared services? We took evidence from the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland last week, and it said that it fears that additional costs would be incurred in order to meet information standards and data sharing requirements and to update software and undertake training. While noting that those costs might be modest relative to the overall scale of costs, the alliance stressed that it would be significant for individual providers and could affect the viability of third sector organisations, so there is concern that that could be an unintended consequence.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Indeed. I now open up the meeting to questions from colleagues around the table.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I call Douglas Lumsden.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Okay—thank you. Do you wish to make any final points before we wind up?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Indeed. The independent review said that there was a huge level of consensus that a national care service was required to achieve consistency and quality. However, the Fraser of Allander Institute has said that the new system that is being developed is unlikely to be any better unless it is funded to be better.
There are real issues about the overall funding of the Scottish Parliament; we know what pressures we are under. Last week, we saw the Deputy First Minister reprofile some £70 million with regard to the policy. How likely is it that we will see the positive changes that you want? Can they happen without investing the sums of money that are required or without impacting on other services?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
We all support the policy ambitions but let us look more at the finances of the proposal.
One of the issues that witnesses have brought to our attention is the scale of uncertainty about the costings. Last week, for example, the Fraser of Allander Institute said that one of its concerns was that there were no workings beneath the costs in the financial memorandum to show how the costs had been arrived at or why we had such a breadth of costs. The Auditor General for Scotland supported that point, too. We realise that there is uncertainty and that there will be secondary legislation, but it is a matter of concern that the financial memorandum, which is what we are taking evidence on, does not contain more detailed costings for delivering the care service.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I do not think that anyone would accuse you of making up your mind too early. People just want to ensure that the bill goes forward with solid financial foundations. That is the issue that I think we are grappling with. For example, there are a number of areas where the financial memorandum fails to give any indication at all of the likely scale of costs. Audit Scotland lists a number of areas where no indication of costs has been provided, and those are significant. They include
“the costs of any national care boards ... transition costs for Local Authorities and Health Boards, including double running ... the impact of changes to VAT treatment ... the impact of any changes to pension scheme arrangements and associated contribution costs arising from pay harmonisation/rationalisation ... the extent of potential changes to capital investment and maintenance costs ... the cost of the health and social care information scheme.”
There is also the issue of transfer of assets.
There are real issues on which more information could and should be forthcoming, surely, at this point.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I point out that, in evidence to us, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers said:
“The financial memorandum does not represent the outcome of the Feeley review or the national care service consultation. You cannot see the total costs. You are not able to look at what the priorities would be within them or to properly compare alternative models against what is laid out in that financial memorandum.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 25 October 2022; c 33-4.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
One of the things that came out of the evidence is the potential impact on the viability of local authorities as an unintended consequence. The ultimate aim of the policy is to deliver for the people who require the service. If there is a conflict between the viability of a local authority and delivering the service, where would we be?
Some local authorities have smaller management teams than others, and those teams have a wide range of roles. If expertise is transferred—potentially for very good reasons—that local authority might not be able to deliver on other areas of its services. How much time has been spent looking at that issue?
