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 3443 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
We are coming towards the end of our session. On that last point, Mr Johnston, you said earlier that the data is in place to inform the second phase of the plan, but it is worth reflecting that the key messages in the briefing are quite critical of the Scottish Government. Key message 1 says:
“The Scottish Government has not yet demonstrated a clear shift to preventing child poverty.”
Key message 2 says:
“It is not possible to assess the success of the Scottish Government’s first four-year plan to reduce child poverty, launched in 2018.”
The briefing goes on to cite Bill Scott saying that there is not a link between spending decisions, outcomes and targets being met. That is one reason why we as the Public Audit Committee are keen to keep an eye on the issue and keep scrutinising it, and why the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission want to keep it under their watchful eye and produce further briefings.
Auditor General, do you want to say a word about that before I come to my final question?
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
Colin Beattie has more questions on this area.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. We will come to the human rights of children quite early on, Bruce.
I will put my first question to John Dickie of the Child Poverty Action Group. Although we are an audit committee, we are also interested in the human face of what is happening out there. Will you start us off by drawing on your experience to give some examples of the impact of living in poverty and of the experiences that you have drawn on from children and families who live below the poverty line?
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
Does anyone else want to comment on that?
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
Before Colin Beattie comes back in, a few people have indicated that they want to come in on this question—I think that it has stirred things up, Colin.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
Thanks. One thing that occurs to me is that children are only five or 10 once and we need to get it right now. There is an urgency to the matter, is there not, John? Unless we get it right now, it will change the course of those young people’s lives.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
I want to pick up that point with Hanna McCulloch and Matthew Sweeney. Paragraph 44 of the briefing is pretty clear in its critique of the patchy return by local authority area. The briefing says:
“people with experience of living in poverty were rarely involved in developing plans”,
which is the point that John Dickie has just made. The briefing continues:
“only four out of 27 reports available had an introduction signed by the chief executive. The level of sign-off of reports was seen as an indicator of the level of commitment to tackling child poverty”.
It goes on to say that
“most reports used data well in describing their local area”,
but that
“not many reports considered monitoring and evaluation carefully”.
Do you have any reflections on that? Do you accept it as fair criticism?
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
It is useful to have that on the record.
Hanna, the briefing mentions the Renfrewshire tackling poverty commission, of which you were a member, if I have been informed correctly.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
That leads us on nicely to a question from Sharon Dowey.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 10 November 2022
Richard Leonard
Matthew Sweeney has just alluded to that, too. You said earlier that there is a limit to the extent to which some of these big questions can be tackled at local government level. First, do you want to comment on the part of the briefing that I read out? Secondly, will you give us some of your reflections from being involved in that commission?
