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 2934 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
You have suggested that some local authorities might continue to run assets such as care homes—certainly, Glasgow has built some quite modern ones—and that some assets might be transferred into the national care service. An issue has been raised with us about how the finances for that would work. Some councils might have paid off loans, but some might still have loans or public-private partnership agreements linked to new care homes. Do you know whether the Government would be taking on the loan as well as the asset or, again, will that be considered in later discussions?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
You mentioned staff transfer, which is another issue that has been raised with us. Even among care staff working for councils, there will be a wide range of terms and conditions at the moment, and that range will be even wider when the third and private sectors are brought in. Where are we on the costs of that? I presume that, in the long run, the aim is to consolidate people’s terms and conditions so that they are more consistent.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
With the college regionalisation process, it took quite a lot of time to align the staff terms and conditions and pay. Is it fair to say that that would be quite a major process?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
My final question follows on from that. Many people are comparing the NCS with the NHS. The NHS has quite a mixed model because, in effect, general practitioners and dentists are private businesses. Is it that the kind of mixed model that you foresee as the way forward?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
John Mason
I will build on some of what has already been said. On how much planning was done before the bill was introduced and how many care boards there will be, I imagine that the costs would be quite different if there were 32 care boards, which would match each council area, or eight or nine, which would match the health board areas as they are. At what stage is the thinking on that? Is that also a co-design issue?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
John Mason
That is helpful—thank you.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
John Mason
That is a one-word answer—thank you.
I am thinking specifically of city and town centres. We do not really know whether they are going to recover and whether people will eventually go back. Do you want to expand on that “No”?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
John Mason
That is helpful. It struck me that some students might work for only a few hours a week and some might not, but some would be counted as economically inactive and some as active.
We had evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which talked about “the effective workforce”. It will be interesting to hear what other people think about that but I take it to mean people who are doing full-time jobs.
The other angle on that is that some people have definitely reassessed their whole lifestyle and work-life balance. A lot of us would say that that is a good thing—you can spend a bit more time with your family and so on. I heard one guy on the radio last week—a musician—saying that he previously never took breaks, and now he is taking breaks. That is good in a sense, but it probably contributes less to the economy.
I am struggling a wee bit here to ask a specific question. Is the issue that people are doing fewer hours and have a better work-life balance, but that is actually damaging the economy? I am not sure who wants to answer that.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
John Mason
That is helpful. I am interested in where things are going as we move forward, so I will link that to a suggestion in your paper, Professor Fothergill, that in some areas there is no point in investing in or boosting the economy further because those areas already have full employment. You said that we should target our support more at areas where there is not full employment, which I presume are the needier areas.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Road to Recovery Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 November 2022
John Mason
There is a lot to follow up on. I want to clarify some of the data—perhaps this is a question for Mr Freeman from the ONS. It is about the term “economic inactivity”. Do I understand it correctly that people who might only work one hour a week and people who might work 35 hours a week are all lumped together and defined as economically active? Is that correct?
