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: 26 September 2023
Liz Smith
How do you propose to put in front of the committee what the true costs will be? We all accept that no financial memorandum can be 100 per cent accurate, but it will have to be much more accurate than the one with which we were presented before. I do not see how we will be able to get to that situation when engagement is on-going that might produce many more suggestions about how to improve the bill. Do you accept that, as a result of that, it is difficult to get to the cost structures that the committee needs to scrutinise?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Liz Smith
Thank you.
My final point is on one of the difficulties that we had this time last year, which was the strong criticism that we heard of the Scottish Government’s proposals from people on the front line of delivery, including some in council authorities and care services. There was a bit of a contrast between what they were saying and what those who had experienced care were saying. Have you consulted in great depth those who were critical of the proposals, because they felt that the costs had not been fully set out and, indeed, told you that the bill for the whole thing was going to be much more than you had predicted? Do we have some statistics for the figures that COSLA and local government said were a bit of a concern? Has that arithmetic been done?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Liz Smith
Do any of you think that there is any sign that there is slight movement, and that economically inactive people are starting to look for jobs, or is it just a very difficult landscape?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Liz Smith
It is difficult. I also want to ask about high streets, and perhaps Rachel Cook is best placed to answer this question. Obviously, it is of great concern to many of us who represent rural communities that high streets in our smaller towns are decimated. What else can we do to try to reverse that trend?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Liz Smith
That is important, but it is even more important for the costs that go along with those changes to instil confidence in people that the bill will be deliverable. That is the area that concerns the committee, and I suggest that there is still an awful lot of work to be done before the next financial memorandum comes back to the committee to give us a much better idea of the costs, given the divergence of opinion.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Liz Smith
That is the point for this committee. I absolutely understand why co-design could be beneficial—particularly from the point of view of getting the input of many who feel that the existing system is not satisfactory—and I understood it when Kevin Stewart spoke to us, too. My concern is that the process of engagement is still going on, and we know from our previous consideration that, although many on the front line of the service were concerned about the change, lots of others involved in the delivery of the service were also quite critical—in fact, very critical, in a few cases—of what the Scottish Government proposed.
My point is that it is a bit like putting the cart before the horse. If the co-design continues—for good reasons—should we not finish that process before we come back with the detail of the bill and, therefore, the forecast of the costs? Would that not be an easier way of doing it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Liz Smith
Will you tell us what those themes are?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Liz Smith
That is why I asked that question; John Swinney impressed me with what he said about that. Those are people whose skills we desperately need—as Louise Maclean rightly flagged—and who have a wealth of experience, so trying to ensure that they come back into the workforce is critical. There is a productivity angle as well.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Liz Smith
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Liz Smith
I want to ask about UK tax and global tax debates. In the first instance, there is a huge issue about the UK tax structure being far too complex, having far too many loopholes and not delivering the revenue that it should. People are avoiding tax too much, and there is a big debate about inheritance tax. On the global scene, there are lots of debates about whether we should move towards environmental taxation to stop some of the big multinationals depositing their money in safe havens. Those are all academic debates that take up lots of column space in The Economist, Financial Times, The Spectator, New Statesman and so on. To what extent does a Government in Scotland have to try to second-guess what will happen with those debates, because, technically, they could mean important changes in the future?
