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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 1653 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
Thank you very much, convener, and thank you, panel, for being here this morning.
I will try not to rehearse what has already been covered by my colleagues but, like others, I want to reiterate my very clear concern, anger and frustration that we are where we are today. We have been trying to get answers to some of the questions that have been asked since November, and although we are finally starting to get those answers, the fact that it has taken four months is not, I think, adequate—and that is before we get to the content and detail of the recovery plan.
Professor O’Neill, you said that the recovery plan was written with a financial lens but there was now an opportunity to move to a more holistic approach. When you said that, was it only the bottom line—the finances—that you were taking into account?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
So it has not been done as part of the plan. It will come later, as an afterthought.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
Okay—thank you.
You said that lessons had been learned from previous restructuring. In 2023, I think, Inspiring Futures produced a report on the need to improve communications following the latest restructuring at that time. How have you ensured that lessons and all the recommendations from that report have been implemented in the past four months?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
That is helpful to know.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
That is a consultation on a draft plan that already exists; it is not co-design or co-production.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
What about the staff? You talked about having engaged with staff unions. Going forward, what do you expect that engagement to look like?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
Of course.
You have talked about learning lessons and changing what you do and how you do it in the light of things that have happened in the past—good or bad. However, I am still not hearing from you a clear commitment to anything more than consultation; I am not hearing a commitment to genuine engagement and participation. By that, I mean getting staff and students involved in presenting ideas and suggestions that are not made only in response to a plan that the Scottish Government, the trade unions and most of us sitting around the committee table find unacceptable. Frankly, anybody who has seen the plan finds it unacceptable. I am not hearing from you any more than, “This is the plan. We can tweak it around the edges, but that’s it.â€
What have you have learned from engaging and communicating on the previous restructuring, and in the past four months, that will change from now?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
Were any staff members on the task force?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
Which you lead.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Maggie Chapman
I will pick up on the idea of risk assessments. I am actually quite staggered that student numbers were assessed as green until they were red. Do you need to reassess how you calculate and identify risk appetite?
