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 1244 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I am always brief, convener. We have a power to create new benefits. Was that looked at as a way to introduce what you wanted to do—simply via a new benefit?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
You said that a lot of progress has been made, and you mentioned two payments. What other progress would you say has been made in the past couple of years?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Just finally from me—you will be glad to hear that, minister—if such support is to be introduced, will it require regulations or could it be done within your existing powers?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
That is very helpful. I will just ask for clarification on one point. If the proposal is possible and the negotiations with the DWP go well, would the payment be delivered by the DWP or by Social Security Scotland?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Justice Priorities
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning to you, cabinet secretary and minister, and to all your team. It is good to have you before the committee today.
I address my first question to Mr Dey. When will the Scottish Government deliver its lifelong learning offer, and how will it ensure that lifelong learning is accessible to lower-income parents in particular?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
One of the commitments made in the Scottish National Party’s manifesto at the last election was to introduce a special support payment so that students who are in receipt of benefits do not lose out because they are in receipt of or entitled to student support. When will that manifesto commitment be delivered?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I will push you a wee bit on that, minister. It is a bit vague for people who are listening to hear you say, “We are working on it”. I am sure that that response could be used for lots of policies. Have you any indication of when that manifesto commitment will be delivered?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Child Poverty and Parental Employment Inquiry
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
I am a bit confused by your answer. Why would that require Westminster legislation? Why could we not just pass legislation here in the Scottish Parliament to introduce a new benefit, which would supplement the income that you want to pass on to people? I am not sure why that would need Westminster approval.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Social Justice Priorities
Meeting date: 14 September 2023
Jeremy Balfour
Cabinet secretary, I take you back to the first question that my colleague asked about the information that we have. We all want information so that we can assess how the process is going.
One disappointment was the letter that we received over the summer from David Wallace, the chief executive of Social Security Scotland, who told us that the organisation is not monitoring at all the time from when someone puts in an application for a new benefit to when the application is processed. Is that an issue with how the system was designed by the Scottish Government or with Social Security Scotland not using the system properly? Are you concerned about that? If so, what are you doing about it?
