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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 2810 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 5 December 2023
John Mason
Perhaps the main risk is that it runs over budget.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
I am also on the Finance and Public Administration Committee. I do not want to overlap too much, but that committee is concerned about the number of organisations in Scotland. This is a small country, but we are getting more commissioners and more councils, commissions or whatever we want to call them. Am I right in saying that there is an assumption in the Government that we should not set up new bodies, except as a last resort?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Delivering Scottish Social Security
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
In quite a lot of what you have said, you have emphasised the relationship between Holyrood—including the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and everything else—and Westminster. That is obviously not something that we can control. I note that you say:
“I warmly welcomed and reciprocated the keenness of the then Chair of Westminster’s SSAC to liaise regularly with SCoSS”.
That sounds positive, although I do not know whether that is continuing now that you are not there. Is there anything that we in Scotland can do to improve the relationship with the DWP, or is it just going to be one of those things that fluctuates over time?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
I will focus on the financial side of things. We have asked previous witnesses about the financial memorandum. If the council were to be established—I accept that the Government is not keen for that to happen—do you think that the figures in the financial memorandum are realistic?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Delivering Scottish Social Security
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
That is also helpful. Another comment that you make is:
“Despite such constraints on policy changes, Scottish Government has thankfully been able to diverge a long way from Westminster”.
Is that more about how we do things, rather than the actual content?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
Another cost that has been mentioned is that of the information technology set-up. We all know that IT costs sometimes run out of control. An IT set-up cost of ÂŁ50,000 has been suggested, with annual maintenance costs of only ÂŁ7,000. Those figures seem quite low to me.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
You have made the point that, even if a new council was set up and it recommended an expansion of who could receive benefits, that would not necessarily happen, for a variety of reasons, one of which relates to cost. If the council was set up and it recommended that more people should get benefits—more women, for example, or more people with other injuries or diseases, or perhaps stress—where would the budget come from? The fire service has been looking for support to deal with cancer-related issues, and there are teachers with stress and so on. This is not in the bill, but if the figure of £84 million, or £81 million, that has been mentioned were to double, would that be financially feasible?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
Without pre-empting the coming consultation, you are saying that that could be an option and that all the advice, research and other functions could be fitted into an existing body, instead of setting up a new one.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
You raise quite a lot of points, one of which is about research. I understand that, at the UK level, there is only ÂŁ100,000 for research, which seems incredibly low. The bill proposes a figure of ÂŁ30,000 for research. Do you get a lot of research for ÂŁ30,000, as far as you know?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Delivering Scottish Social Security
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
John Mason
My question may be partly on the same theme. You wrote in your paper:
“It has been a story of high expectations bumping up against implicit, consequently rendered explicit, constraints”.
How many of the constraints are financial constraints? You have spoken quite a lot about bureaucracy, process and so on, but is one of the major constraints a lack of finance?
