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 1492 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Economic and Fiscal Forecasts
Meeting date: 20 December 2023
Ross Greer
That draws us into the debate about the fiscal framework and whether relative tax growth is the best measurement from Scotland’s perspective. We have discussed that before, and I am sure that we will continue to discuss it for some time to come.
Box 4.2 of your report has an interesting reference to the behavioural effects and how you estimate, measure and mitigate them. It also references the HMRC report from 2021 on the behavioural effects of tax changes in Scotland. I remember that report, but I cannot remember why HMRC produced it. Does it do so on a cyclical basis? Should we expect another one, or was it a one-off?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Ross Greer
Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Ross Greer
I am interested in a couple of issues, particularly how the ethical questions that we talked about earlier marry up with what Willie Rennie said about exams, assessments and how we measure things in schools. Chris Ranson gave an example. It is one thing to be able to tell whether a pupil has used something such as ChatGPT to help them with something in an essay for which there is a right and a wrong answer—for example, the name of a historical figure or a date is either right or wrong—but, on much more subjective issues, it can be harder for staff to drill down and tell whether a pupil has used an AI system, even if they know the pupil well.
When we get into territory that is incredibly subjective, how can we produce advice on distinguishing between what a pupil has produced and what AI might have produced? There might be no factual right or wrong answer for you to be able to check the hallucination points that have been mentioned.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Ross Greer
On the point about time, I am interested in the thoughts of Chris Ranson, as a teacher, and of Ollie Bray, given his experience in the classroom. Realistically, there will never be the capacity in the system for a teacher to do that one-on-one assessment with every pupil, but there probably is the capacity for pupils in group settings to, in essence, cross-examine one another while being observed by a teacher, and that might raise red flags if it is clear that a pupil does not have a comprehension of what they presented.
Is there a way to develop such a system in a group setting in order to address workload issues? We can all envisage a system in which there is limitless capacity and, therefore, staff can address all such issues directly, but that is not the system that we have, and it is not realistic to think that we will ever have it. Is there a role for cross-examination by pupils and students themselves?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Ross Greer
I will start with Louise Hunter. I am interested to know how you would characterise the Scottish Government’s overall response to Who Cares? Scotland’s “Paving the Way” report. Do you feel that the Government really grasped what was being said?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Ross Greer
Is there—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Ross Greer
Thanks very much.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Ross Greer
In the interests of time, I thank the minister for that update, which was useful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Ross Greer
I will return to what Mike Burns said about voicing an appropriate level of frustration to the group on data. That issue is of interest to members of the committee, and to Parliament as a whole, across a wide variety of areas. We produce a huge amount of data in the public sector, but that does not necessarily drive improvement in the way that we want it to or even give us an accurate reading of how the system is operating. Will you tell us a little bit more about what you mean when you talk about trying to streamline the data that is being produced to drive improvement? What is the working group’s process for doing that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Ross Greer
That is absolutely something that we can and will raise—I will certainly raise it—with the minister.
I just want to check something. In the meetings that you have had with the minister and with the First Minister, have they given you any indication that there will be a full response to the “Paving the Way” report coming on their part, or do they consider events since then to have somewhat superseded it?
