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 1311 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning. We will look at the relaid regulations on 31 March, which is fine. In order that we can look ahead and do the appropriate planning, however, I have a question about the increase to the benefits. I presume that the cost will be met from the Scottish Government budget, rather than from what has already been planned. Where is the money coming from? Will it come from the social security budget that has been approved by Parliament or from a different department’s budget? When we passed the budget, Kate Forbes told us that every penny had been accounted for and all the money would be spent. This is obviously extra money that was not in the budget. Where is it coming from?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I am happy for Emma Congreve to start, if she wants to.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Okay—that is helpful. It is interesting to think about whether there could be timed tapering.
My final question is on the fiscal framework, which is a mystery to most of us. Obviously, negotiations are going on around the framework between the UK Government and the Scottish Government. How important is social security in the negotiations? If you were advising the Scottish Government, what would you tell it to ask for?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Medium-term Financial Strategy and Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I have two questions, the first of which is aimed at David Phillips. I was interested in the issue of tapering with regard to some benefits. Can you point us to any evidence of tapering in other parts of the world with regard to things like personal independence payments and the disability living allowance that we could consider with regard to new benefits in Scotland? There has been quite a lot of research that shows that people ask why they should get better if they are going to lose their benefits. For example, if regaining the ability to walk 20m or 25m means that a person could lose their car, they might ask what would be the benefit of them getting any better? Is there any evidence of tapering across the world with regard to things like PIP, which we could look at in Scotland?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Will there be any knock-on effect on other things that you might have been thinking about doing in the financial year? You might have been thinking, “We could be a bit more generous here” or “We could think about that benefit.” Have such things been put on the back shelf because you are bringing forward the money fairly early in the financial year?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you, minister.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Department for Work and Pensions (Devolved Social Security)
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I have two quick questions, minister, to get information on where we are. Back in October 2021, both Governments asked for an independent report on the fiscal framework. Will you update us on where we are with that and when we are likely to see any of the workings from the independent review come into the public domain?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Department for Work and Pensions (Devolved Social Security)
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you—that is really helpful.
My final question in this area is on the differential between the number of disabled people in employment in Scotland compared to the number in England. In Scotland, a higher number of people who are disabled are unemployed than is the case in England, and the number is growing larger. Why might that be the case? What can we do about it in Scotland, as we come out of the two-year pandemic, when disabled people might be left behind? How can we get more disabled people into safe employment that gives them an opportunity to be promoted and to be fulfilled by doing real work?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Department for Work and Pensions (Devolved Social Security)
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
I want to go back to the helpful answer that we got about how access to passported benefits—I will keep calling them that for the moment, as I think that we all understand what we mean by that—is assessed.
Have there been discussions between the UK and Scottish Governments about whether access to passported benefits could be assessed in another way if PIP was not used as a criterion? Have such discussions started at ministerial or official level? Could you explain how that could happen? If we had a divergence between benefits in Scotland relative to benefits in England and Wales, are there mechanisms that we could use to allow people to still get, for example, the ÂŁ10 Christmas bonus that is available to those who are on PIP at the moment, which is obviously linked to a particular benefit. Could work be done on that or would that be almost too complicated to do?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee
Department for Work and Pensions (Devolved Social Security)
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Jeremy Balfour
Good morning, minister and officials, and thank you for coming. I will follow up briefly on my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy’s question about the access to work scheme. That is one of those hidden secrets that a lot of people do not know about. I was interested in what the official said about trying to promote it more. Have you ever discussed a joint piece of work on that? I know that the money comes from the DWP, but it seems to me that many companies, particularly smaller and medium-sized companies, do not know about the scheme. Can you give us an idea of how the two Governments can work together to promote it better?
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