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 2881 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
John Mason
When they were before us, the trade unions certainly had an expectation that there would be an expansion of issues considered, and that would almost inevitably lead to an expansion of benefits paid. Is there any point in having the council if it makes a range of recommendations and the Government says no to them?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
John Mason
Is it not the case that, to start with and for the first few years, only the name will have changed?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
John Mason
To be frank, I think that that happens, because there are few checks on people with power of attorney. In a sense, that is a separate issue, but we could be talking about either situation.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
John Mason
How should clients be informed that their information might be used in this way?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
John Mason
My reaction to that is positive, because there is a problem out there that we need to address.
Can you say anything about how the regulations might interact with power of attorney? Would the person who holds the power of attorney be the one who is informed or consulted? Of course, there is a risk that they will be the person who is carrying out the abuse.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 December 2023
John Mason
On the timing for setting all of this up, the Government seems to be clear that stage 1—which you have rightly said is coming along quite soon—will be purely about transferring the payment from the UK to Scotland. There will be no changes for the first few years, then, after a few years, maybe the Scottish system will change. If that is the timescale that we are looking at, is it worth spending money on a council at this point?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
John Mason
Of the taxpayer’s behaviour meriting a penalty.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
John Mason
My final point is about some of the assets and intangible assets in the accounts, which the convener also asked you about. In particular, I was looking at the information technology system under development, on which £152,000 was spent last year. You suggested earlier that quite a lot of different projects are happening, so that £152,000 will not be for one big project.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
John Mason
I will carry on with that line of questioning. I notice that your turnover of staff has reduced compared with the previous year. I take it that that is a good thing.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
John Mason
That seems fair enough. You are not a huge organisation, so, inevitably, people are going to have to move on. I get that point.
You mentioned hybrid working. According to our papers, one of the suggestions in your reports was that the organisation’s ability to meet operational requirements was not damaged during the hybrid working pilot that you have been running. However, “not damaged” seems quite a low bar. Were the results positive, or are you not sure?
