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 3226 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Emma, you say in your submission:
“The creation of an electronic integrated health and social care record is in the legislation, but no costing has been produced. The reason given is that the work is at a too early stage to estimate costs, but it will be provided in the Programme business case due in Autumn 2022.”
We are now in the autumn. Have you been advised as to when those figures will be provided, if they have not been provided already?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 1 November 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Ralph, you state in your submission:
“The purpose of creating the NCS is to improve the delivery of community health and social care together. The clear definition of community health is not evident within the Bill and therefore it is significantly more challenging to understand the financial implications on services and costs.”
What impact might that have?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Kenneth Gibson
That concludes questions from members. I have a few to wind up with.
The first is a follow-up to Douglas Lumsden’s point. The briefing by the Scottish Parliament information centre says:
“The stated purpose of the Bill is to improve the quality and consistency of social services in Scotland.”
From our discussion today, it seems like you are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Surely, if there are issues of consistency and quality, as you have just touched on in your answer to Douglas, they should be addressed directly. Who has the problems of quality and consistency? Name and shame them. Would it not be easier just to impose duties to ensure that they raise their standards to the level of those who are doing best? I would be happy for you to name them, too.
As Michelle Thomson pointed out, it seems to be a monumental risk to have a bill of this nature, with all the financial implications, because a few service deliverers are not up to scratch.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Kenneth Gibson
All the submissions that the committee has received express concern about the VAT baseline, which is included in the figures in table 2 of the financial memorandum. To be fair, time has trundled on, and that was published before the latest skyrocketing levels of inflation. However, in its response, COSLA states:
“These figures are misleadingly uprated each year, from a 2019/20 baseline, by inflation plus 3%. This uprating does not reflect subsequent Local Government settlements”.
That is important, given that it was announced way back in May. The response goes on to say that the uprating
“is completely at odds with the reality presented by the Scottish Government’s own Resource Spending Review, of a 'flat cash' settlement”.
Surely that alone means that the financial memorandum is no longer fit for purpose and requires to be updated at least.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Kenneth Gibson
The last question from me—and the last in this session—is: does the financial memorandum, in your view, deliver best estimates of the cost of delivering the legislation?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We are joined in the public gallery by members of the California Lawyers Association. I welcome them all to the Scottish Parliament.
We have received apologies from Ross Greer and Daniel Johnson.
The first item on our agenda is an evidence session with Scottish Government officials on the financial memorandum to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. I welcome Donna Bell, director of social care and national care service development, and Fiona Bennett, interim deputy director for national health service, integration and social care finance.
I understand that Donna Bell would like to make a short opening statement.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Could you speak up a wee bit? I am finding it difficult to hear you, and I think that other members are, too.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much for that opening statement. Given the submissions that we have received, you will understand that it is likely that there will be a number of questions from me and from colleagues around the table.
In its submission, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities mentions
“the long-term resourcing of the National Care Service; matters in relation to borrowing, holding of reserves, pensions, audit and VAT; and shared services”,
and it says:
“Disappointingly, the draft Bill and memoranda do not address these points explicitly and there is an unacceptable lack of clarity.”
Another issue came to the fore in all the submissions. We asked whether there was sufficient time to contribute to the consultation, and every respondent gave a one-word answer: no. We asked them to elaborate on that, and they said that the consultation took place over the summer and the period was far too short, given the magnitude of the bill and the depth of the financial memorandum, which is one of the most detailed—if not the most detailed—financial memorandum that I have ever seen.
How do you respond to those concerns and the other issues that I have raised?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Paul Manning, you said:
“Whilst the Financial Memorandum acknowledges that further work is required, this should have been undertaken prior to the publication of the Bill, to support adequate scrutiny.”
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 25 October 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I realise that. A number of caveats are given right at the start of the financial memorandum, where that point is made, and the Scottish Parliament information centre repeated that in its briefing, so we are aware of that. At the same time, a structure is being developed that seems to have unrealistic parameters, and that is of concern to all of us.
