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 1319 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
The financial memorandum, as it stands, includes everything that is covered off by the bill. I have said to the Finance and Public Administration Committee—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
The Government has said to the finance committee that, at each stage as we move forward, we will publish the business case for each aspect of delivery. That will give the Parliament the transparency and openness to enable it to scrutinise everything.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
Well, I would dispute that, convener, but I think that we had probably better not go into the machinations of that today.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
I would dispute that figure. Beyond that, as I highlighted earlier, we cannot afford to stand still on the national care service. We know that we need to build services that are fit for the future. We have to build services that are sustainable and meet the needs of the changing demographics of our population. That is required, so there can be no standing still.
What I cannot do here today is give the committee the annual budgeting for each aspect of service delivery, because that is dealt with annually. However, I assure the committee that I have reiterated to the finance committee that, as we move forward, we will publish all the financial and business cases for our decisions.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
Again, Mr Greer will be well aware, from what I said to the Finance and Public Administration Committee, that the work that we are doing at the moment, including the review work, will look at all of that as we move forward. As we propose and seek to make changes, we will bring all the elements of the business cases for those changes to committees and to Parliament so that they can be scrutinised. I imagine that a huge number of other stakeholders will scrutinise us on that front, too.
There are difficulties with some of those calculations. As the committee is well aware, it is often quite difficult for us to get certain aspects of data. The work that we are doing on the national care service creates a good opportunity to improve data collection as we move forward so that we know about the spend that goes on out there, some of which we are not quite sure about at the moment.
I go back to Mr Dey’s point about carers. We know that the Government provides £84 million or £85 million—if that is not the right figure, I will correct it—to local authorities to ensure that the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 is implemented, but we are not absolutely certain that all that money is spent on that particular service, as Mr Greer and others will know.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
Ms Maguire is absolutely right to concentrate on implementation gaps. The committee has talked—and, more important, listened—to a number of young people. In some respects, far too much resource has been put in at points of crisis and not enough has been put into prevention. When people concentrate on prevention and have linked-up services, they spend much less on crisis. We need to recognise that, at the moment, much of the system—not just children’s services, but adult services—is focused on crisis spend. That costs a lot of money, and we also need to consider the human cost of not getting those preventative services right.
Ms Haughey is absolutely right to highlight the opportunity that we have in that respect. No matter whether children’s services will be in or out of the national care service, the work that we are doing now means that we can look at where things are not working and see how we can improve them. That will be easier with the national standards in the NCS, but that does not mean that we should not be aspiring to bring up standards across the board for all services, whether they be out or in.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
I am quite sure that we can provide you with many examples from the evidence that we have gathered. I do not know whether Iona Colvin has anything to hand just now.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
Ministers will not impose on any of those things. We are going to build a system that allows folks the opportunity to get redress—the right redress—for their complaints. We are talking about improving the complaints system, and what you have highlighted is certainly not how I would describe things. We want to get complaints and redress absolutely right. That is a major issue for the public at large, and it is one of the areas that we are absolutely adamant that we will get right.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
Convener, I am sure that the committee has some of this information already, but we can provide more of it. There are 31 integration authorities in Scotland at the moment. Some operate with fully delegated powers for community children’s health services, children’s social care services and justice social work services. We can provide a breakdown to the committee of where those things are currently happening—where those delegations are complete—if you do not have it.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Kevin Stewart
The Government stood on a manifesto commitment of creating—
