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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
In the two minutes that we have left, we probably cannot have a debate about the Barnett formula or budget negotiations between parties, so I want to ask about Social Security Scotland and the management of budgeting. Around 拢301 million of its budget is operational expenditure. What discussions is the Government having about projected future spend on running the organisation?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
Thank you for that. I know that we have limited time, so, before I bring in Danny Boyle, my second question is about what engagement you have had with the Government in discussing those priorities. We, in the committee, have heard loud and clear your ask around people who have no recourse to public funds, but what sort of engagement have you had with the Government on that?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
If Danny Boyle does not want to come in on that, I am happy to hand back to you, convener.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
Thank you for joining us. Earlier, we heard the Deputy First Minister extolling the virtues of Ireland鈥檚 policy agendas. The impacts of the rent control policy in Ireland include a 30 per cent increase in homelessness, with a 38 per cent increase in Dublin alone. Do you think the Government has not looked at the unintended consequences of the rent freeze policy?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
Going back to the rent control policy and unintended consequences, the Scottish Government has set itself a target of providing 110,000 affordable homes. We are now hearing from housing associations that they are not able to deliver that. Given what you said about the need for more supply, what impact do you think that the policy will have? Have you spoken to housing associations about it? They are really concerned about the very negative consequences that it will have on their ability to progress projects, which they might have to scrap.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
Yes.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
Good morning. I want to ask two questions, one of which concerns partner organisations in local government. In not just this budget year but previous ones, as a result of decisions by Scottish ministers, councils have seen cuts to their budgets. In what way would a flat-cash allocation to local authorities impact on your organisations and the services that local government helps to deliver?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Budget Savings and Reductions 2022-23
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
An important part of this, which you have outlined, concerns the projected lack of uptake of the benefits that are currently available. When it comes to this year鈥檚 in-year spend, where do other benefits鈥攆or example, the best start grant鈥攕it, and are those also being earmarked as potential areas in which finance is currently allocated but may not be spent?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
That is helpful. We are also waiting to see the bill and probably will not see it until an hour before the committee has to look at it.
Specifically with regard to rural homelessness, which we maybe do not talk enough about, supply and demand in those cases is often hugely limited. Do you know of any work that has been done about potential consequences for rural homelessness?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Miles Briggs
Finally, I want to ask about an issue that I have raised consistently. We are seeing a really depressing and worrying picture with regard to the number of children in temporary accommodation. I would say that, here in the capital, the situation is at crisis point. Where is the Scottish Government going wrong with the policy direction on that?
