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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 1366 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Allotments
Meeting date: 14 June 2022
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. Does anyone else want to come in on that point?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Allotments
Meeting date: 14 June 2022
Miles Briggs
Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us.
The witnesses have touched on a lot of the questions that I wanted to ask. However, I want to get more details about the auditing of current plots. Ian Welsh mentioned splitting plots. To what extent has the legislation meant that councils have done such work and have looked at how the current maximum capacity is utilised? Has that been done, or have we basically just developed waiting lists?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Miles Briggs
I will follow on some of those questions. Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase about “known knowns” and “known unknowns” springs to mind, and we are probably going round in circles.
Previous forecasts have looked at the costs of administering Social Security Scotland. Have you looked at those and at where potential additional costs might be, given the amount of benefits that it will be administering?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Miles Briggs
Does Darren Kelly have an opinion on that modelling?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Miles Briggs
Thank you for that. We are in new territory, given the levels of social security benefits that the Scottish Government will be delivering and how much of the Scottish budget that will take up. You mentioned the reserves. Has underspend also been factored in, with additional money being available in-year via the Scottish Government for some of the funding?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Miles Briggs
Thank you. That was helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Miles Briggs
Thank you—that was helpful.
My other question is on the Scottish Government’s spending review. Do you have any more clarity on the potential funding gap? I think that we are all looking at a predicted cut of around 7 per cent in local government funding. Is that where the funding is likely to be found?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Miles Briggs
Having produced these reports for a number of years now, you will have been seeing this happening; you must also have seen how, every year, local government and other budgets have been facing the same kinds of cuts. From your experience of other committees to which you have given evidence, do you think that more can be found in these budgets to meet that shortfall?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. That is maybe another area of uncertainty.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Miles Briggs
Good morning, panel, and thank you for joining us.
I want to follow the previous line of questioning by asking about the uncertainty around the some of the new benefits that have been launched. I am thinking, for example, of the forecasts outlined in December with regard to disability benefits. Do you have any more clarity on cost predictions since they have been launched?
