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
I want to take you back to the questions about demand for childcare and how that is being assessed and what data is being collected. I think that Willie Coffey and Graham Simpson wanted to come in on that, but Colin Beattie was on a roll, so I let him continue.
Willie Coffey, do you want to come in on that issue before you move on to your other questions? Graham Simpson also wants to come in on this data set stuff.
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
It is an entitlement for those families and children that does not appear to have been fulfilled. It is a failing of this part of the policy, isn’t it?
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
Sorry, but what I am asking, Mr Rennick, is to do with what you said about 84 per cent of providers meeting the criterion of paying their staff at least the living wage, which means that 16 per cent did not. What leverage do you have over that 16 per cent?
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
As we reflected in the previous evidence session that we had with the Auditor General, that is an implementation group. That is its title, is it not? It is the ELC living wage and fair work implementation group. What is its role in ensuring that fair work and living wage conditions are implemented? Matthew Sweeney, I do not know whether you can 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
Good. Graham Simpson wants to ask some questions.
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
A final quick question from me. You mentioned a couple of times about the real living wage being paid. That has been announced as an uprating to ÂŁ12 an hour, so a rate of at least ÂŁ12 an hour is what we are speaking about here. You said that that would be funded by the Scottish Government. Do you know for sure that all employers in the voluntary, private and public sectors are paying their staff the real living wage? Do you monitor that? How do you know 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
What do you do about the 16 per cent?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to the 25th meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. The first item on the agenda is a decision on whether to take items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Are members of the committee content to do that?
Members indicated agreement.
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
The committee’s main agenda item is item 2, which is a session on the Auditor General for Scotland and Accounts Commission section 23 report “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”. I am pleased that we are joined by four representatives today. We are joined, from the Scottish Government, by Neil Rennick, director general for education and justice, and Eleanor Passmore, deputy director for early learning and childcare, and, from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, by Matthew Sweeney, policy manager for children and young people, and Joanna Anderson, policy manager for local government and finance.
Before we ask questions of the Scottish Government team and the representatives from COSLA, I ask Mr Rennick to give an opening statement.
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. When we took evidence previously, one of the elements that we were interested in was construction inflation, which was defined as being about 30 per cent—considerably higher than even the retail prices index and the consumer prices index. We were not clear on what you have identified as the principal drivers for inflation in the construction sector. Can you shed any light on that?
