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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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
On a related point, the Auditor General recently published a briefing on infrastructure and the challenges in delivering projected budgets. To what extent might those pressures have an impact on the delivery of infrastructure in the early learning and childcare sector?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
There is a striking implementation gap here, isn’t there? I am thinking in particular about provision for eligible two-year-olds. That is targeted according to people’s benefit receipts and the care experience of either parent or child. They are an extremely important group that is very much a priority for the Scottish Government through the Promise and other work that has been carried out, but these two-year-olds are only two once, aren’t they? If this programme has been in place since August 2021 and we are now at October 2023 and you did not know who these children were, that means that an awful lot of children have missed out on an opportunity for early learning that was stated as a matter of public priority and imperative public policy. How do you answer that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
Exhibit 4 in the Audit Scotland report gives examples of data gaps—we will say a little bit more about those again, I am sure. One of the data gaps listed is the extent to which children with additional support needs are not accessing funded early learning and childcare and the extent of any unmet needs. Here is another targeted group—and an especially important group—where there is a significant gap in the data available.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
Again, Mr Rennick, I think that our view is that this ought to be a priority group. If anybody is to miss out on the childcare and early learning offer, it should not be this group.
You have talked quite a lot about the surveys. We get the importance of surveys in helping inform policy, but what really ought to lead policy is the raw data, is it not? It is all about the evidence of where the demand is, whether it is being met, where the target groups are and whether they are accessing the promise that has been given to them and which they should be accessing. The committee’s view is likely to be that customer surveys and those kinds of sampling exercises are useful, but it is the hard data that we are interested in. Why are you not capturing that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
But it was a stated Scottish Government policy, wasn’t it? I do not know whether that is the point that Mr Simpson is going to make. I understand what you are saying about the availability of data sharing and so on, but if the Scottish Government announces a policy and Parliament legislates for it but we are unable to deliver, it becomes a rather hollow promise, doesn’t it? You do not need to answer that question. I will bring in Graham Simpson.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much, indeed. That has been a useful session for us. I thank the director general, Neil Rennick, for coming along and leading on this evidence and Eleanor Passmore for your input. Matthew Sweeney and Joanna Anderson from COSLA, thank you very much, indeed, for answering our questions and taking part in this morning’s discussion.
10:33 Meeting continued in private until 11:06.Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
I will go swiftly to the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, who has some questions that follow up on that theme.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. I think that you said that, as the accountable officer, you accept all the recommendations in the report that was produced by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission. Is that correct, Mr Rennick?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much.
I turn to something that we took evidence on back in June, when the Auditor General’s report was published. At that point, there was real interest in the capital spend to deliver these quite ambitious targets. At that time, the evidence that we were given was that the Scottish Futures Trust was going to gather information on capital spend and try to come up with some estimates of current spend and what future spend might be. Mr Rennick, can you update us on where we have got to with that work by the Scottish Futures Trust?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
That is helpful. We will ask questions about the financing of the operational model at some point.
Colin Beattie has some questions.
