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 1574 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Michael Marra
I have to say that I am slightly worried by those answers. After all, we are talking about £1 billion of taxpayers’ money, but at times I have found how it has been allocated impenetrable. I have seen the Education Scotland reports, which are case studies of best practice that might be copied elsewhere, but the fact is that practice across Scotland is hugely variable. Moreover, going back to my learned colleagues’ earlier comments, I think that there is very little about how we tie all this up with the outcomes. As politicians and policy makers, we need greater granularity on such matters; we need to know an awful lot more about what the money is being spent on and how it is delivering change for some of the most vulnerable young people in our society. At the moment, it is pretty difficult to find that sort of thing out.
I have one last question to ask, if I may, convener.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Michael Marra
I have a question for the Auditor General about his report on education that was produced prior to this year’s Scottish Parliament election. The report concluded that the equality gap in education remained far too wide and fell far short of the Scottish Government’s aims. We have been living through the pandemic since that work was done. As far as we can tell, there has been huge disruption, the impact of which has been very unequal and has affected some of the most deprived and least privileged groups in society.
Do you have a sense of whether any work is being done on the impact of the pandemic on the sorts of outcomes that you looked at in your report?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Michael Marra
Are you aware of any work to quantify the general impact of lost learning across Scotland? I understand your description of how local and national education authorities reacted to deal with the immediate impact of the pandemic. Do you have a sense of whether any work has been done to assess the longer-term impact on children and young people?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Michael Marra
That is fine. Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Michael Marra
We will wait to see the correspondence—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Michael Marra
The unholy mess at the SQA did not emerge overnight. Statutory measures are not the first action that the EHRC would take. The organisation would have had numerous chances to reform its practices over the period concerned. I have been told that the issue relates to 112 policies at the SQA, including awarding meetings for national courses, awarding body approval policy, equality of access to SQA qualifications, grading for national courses, the qualifications framework, Disclosure Scotland policy and the SQA skills framework. All of those, as overarching policies, pertain to the past two years. What analysis have your officials done of whether the situation opens the Scottish Government to any potential legal challenge from young people who feel that they have been let down?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Michael Marra
You will respond further.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Michael Marra
From the correspondence that I have received, it sounds as though I have had contact with staff more recently than you. On that basis, it would be good if you could follow that up with staff, to check that the process is as you have described and that they are satisfied with it. If we can clear that up, that would be great.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Michael Marra
Being transparent would have meant trying to do something at committee, when under direct questioning on equalities issues, to highlight the fact that this had been coming for a very long time. The cabinet secretary has said that agreement was needed. I look forward to seeing the correspondence between the SQA and the EHRC in which it asked for that to be brought forward so that it could discuss the matter before the committee.
I move to an associated issue. My view, which I think is shared by other members of the committee—and certainly by members of the public to whom I have spoken—is that the performance by the leadership of the SQA in front of our committee last week was poor, even before the information came out the next day. I have had representations from the trade unions, which wrote to you at the start of September about their on-going role and with a submission about the terms of reference of the reform process. They have characterised your response of 21 September as “appalling”. You have said that you are very interested in that reform. I have looked at your response and I share their characterisation of it. Will you give them assurances, in the context of the comments that they made about the hundreds of members of staff who have been ignored by the leadership of the SQA throughout the past two years—in particular, over the debacle of the algorithm—as to whether their viewpoints are being taken into that reform process, and on how you are doing that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Michael Marra
Thank you. That would be great. Please respond to them in writing.
