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 935 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Willie Rennie
No, that makes sense. We do not really know what the national care service will look like, because the bill is a framework bill and the co-design stuff has not been worked up.
What I am puzzled by is that not every part of children’s services would be transferred, as Michael Marra identified in a previous evidence session. Bits of children’s services would still be provided by bodies other than the national care service. Surely that means that we would just be changing the line rather than solving the problem, as not everything would be put under one employer. Surely, we would still have the same problems. They would just involve different people in different places. Does that make sense?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Willie Rennie
I am a bit confused, because you have provided a very coherent explanation as to why, under the current set-up, we should reject the inclusion of children’s services, but you said earlier that you are in favour of including children’s services.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Willie Rennie
Thank you for clearing that up.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Willie Rennie
Basically, are you saying, then, that you do not feel that we have your back in making some of these judgments or that politicians and the Government do not back you up in making such difficult decisions?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Willie Rennie
Why is that voice for early intervention not stronger? We have debated that question for years. Why has it not gotten to where you would like it to get? What is stopping it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 16 November 2022
Willie Rennie
I am sorry—it was probably a wee bit convoluted. What I am really asking about is wider change. What wider change do we need in the system? Do we need better leaders or more money? What do you need us to do? The fact is that we are not getting any clarity on what exactly the Parliament and Government should be doing.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Willie Rennie
I thank the witnesses for their clear evidence. I will ask about the interface issue, which you have kind of addressed already. There is a multitude of interfaces with the police, education services and various other bits. You have kind of answered my question on that, and the answer seems to be that the people who you work with are professionals who are trained to work together—in the way that Bob Doris outlined—and who will overcome any of the barriers that politicians frequently want to put in their way. That seems to be—[Interruption.] I am sure that that is what Bob meant. [Laughter.]
I really want to know whether any members of staff who you work with are crying out for this change and saying, “We must have a national care service to overcome the problems”? Is that happening?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Willie Rennie
The change of tone was interesting. You got really passionate about the issues that you face. It is encouraging that that is where your passion is.
What do the proposals for reform do to the individual staff members that you work alongside? Are those staff worried about their jobs? Are they worried about what their position will be? If they are already running a service, are they worried that they might not be doing that any more? What does that do for tackling the issues that you have just spoken about passionately? Perhaps Mike Burns could answer that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Willie Rennie
Tony, have you come across staff members who are crying out for this change?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Willie Rennie
I have a nice, simple question to start off with. Is it essential to centralise the service—create a national care service—in order to deliver a human rights approach?
