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: 8 November 2022
John Mason
One suggestion that has been made has been that the IJBs or the health and social care partnerships could just take on some different responsibilities, given that the numbers might merge or vary a bit. That would save setting up new structures, with the inevitable duplication and staff focusing on what will happen to their careers, for example, that that would mean. Would simply using the existing structures not have been a cheaper option?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
It really means that, at least during the set-up process, we are going to have another organisation—the care board—on top of the existing ones. The suggestion seems to be that we cannot just switch other things off—the IJB or whatever—on the same day. Much as I am in favour of jobs for accountants, that means that there will be a finance director in the council, a finance director in the health board, a finance director in the health and social care partnership and a finance director in the care board. That seems to be quite a lot of duplication.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
Okay. On another subject, we have already noted that various people have raised the issue of VAT. I take your point that you are having talks with HM Revenue and Customs and other bodies and you will come back to us on that, but I want to press you on it a little bit more. The point has been made that a lot will depend on the type of legal entity that the care boards will be. Can you say anything about that? Is it possible to say that we will choose a legal entity that will definitely avoid VAT?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
I will build on some of what has already been said. On how much planning was done before the bill was introduced and how many care boards there will be, I imagine that the costs would be quite different if there were 32 care boards, which would match each council area, or eight or nine, which would match the health board areas as they are. At what stage is the thinking on that? Is that also a co-design issue?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
That will do for now.
You said that you will give us more information as we go forward. Can you clarify whether the financial memorandum will be revised before stage 3 or whether the business cases—which are, I take it, not part of the statutory process—will be on-going, perhaps for years?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
Probably, given that a lot of—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
That is okay. I am not too worried about that. How do you see the process of developing the business cases? Will it be an annual process, or maybe a six-monthly one? Will the business cases go to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee or will they come to us?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
Another concern that witnesses raised with us is that, if secondary legislation is used for some of the roll-out of the national care service, there will be less scrutiny of it. That is normally the case with secondary legislation.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
You have suggested that some local authorities might continue to run assets such as care homes—certainly, Glasgow has built some quite modern ones—and that some assets might be transferred into the national care service. An issue has been raised with us about how the finances for that would work. Some councils might have paid off loans, but some might still have loans or public-private partnership agreements linked to new care homes. Do you know whether the Government would be taking on the loan as well as the asset or, again, will that be considered in later discussions?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
You mentioned staff transfer, which is another issue that has been raised with us. Even among care staff working for councils, there will be a wide range of terms and conditions at the moment, and that range will be even wider when the third and private sectors are brought in. Where are we on the costs of that? I presume that, in the long run, the aim is to consolidate people’s terms and conditions so that they are more consistent.
