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 1311 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I want to pursue with Alison Gillies her role in getting people the benefits that they are entitled to. Are there passported benefits that people get if they fall under one definition of kinship care but not another? Is the situation the same across the United Kingdom? That might go beyond your experience; if it does, stop me. However, is the situation in Scotland the same as that in England and Wales?
Obviously, Social Security Scotland has just got up and running and is still fairly new. From your early experience of the new agency, is it following the same approach to definitions, or does it see kinship carers as one group?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
That is helpful. If no other witness wants to add anything, I will move on. My next questions are, first, for COSLA.
The independent care review, which refers to the Promise, was commissioned back in 2017 and reported in 2020. What progress has been made on the reforms that were outlined? What are the major things that we need to pick up on and take forward more quickly?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I am referring to kinship care.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
What further support would make the biggest impact for kinship carers throughout Scotland? If there was one thing that you could do tomorrow, what would it be?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
That has been helpful. If you want to tell the committee anything else about that, please do so in writing, as the deputy convener said. In particular, if you have any comments on passported benefits that people might or might not get depending on the definition, perhaps you could reflect that in a written statement. However, that has been very helpful, so thanks very much.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning. I thank all the witnesses for attending the meeting. I have a couple of questions that are aimed at CELCIS to start us off. I was interested to read in your submission and in other submissions that there seems to be some confusion around the words “formal” and “informal” with regard to kinship care; the categories do not seem to be neatly defined. Can you help me out by saying whether that is simply the way that it will always be, or is there work that we can do to develop better definitions? Does that confusion make a difference in practice?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Does anyone else wish to comment?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I want to come back to the point about a national agreed allowance. We are a country of approximately 5 million and we know each other quite well. Is it more sensible to pay such an allowance centrally rather than leaving local authorities with the discretion of how much they pay and what extra should be paid? Should the Scottish Government say that, if someone gives kinship care, this is what they will get, whether they live in Inverness or Dumfries or wherever?
Perhaps Kirsty Doull could go first, then Vivien Thomson, and if anyone else wants to jump in, that would be helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Kinship Care
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
This is a complex question, so a yes/no answer with a follow-up in writing might be helpful. We have talked a lot about having a nationally agreed allowance and how things are different across local authorities in Scotland compared with other parts of the United Kingdom. From your perspective—perhaps Alison Gillies and Gill Westwood could respond—would it be easier if the allowance was administrated across the whole of Scotland, such that everybody got the same amount of money, regardless of where in Scotland they lived?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I have two quick questions. It might be more helpful for you to get back to us in writing on the first one, because it will be quite a long answer. We have talked about the Afghan resettlement scheme. Looking back a little, my understanding is that the work that was done by the Scottish and UK Governments, local authorities and the third sector around the Syrian refugees who came here was very successful. What lessons have we learned from that and how can we implement them?
My second question seeks clarification. There seems to be some confusion about whether children who are refugees or asylum seekers are allowed to have bus passes under the new scheme. Does anyone have any information on whether the free bus passes are available to children in Scotland with refugee or asylum seeker status?
