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
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Ross Greer
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Ross Greer
Can I jump in? Would the aligned and progressive tax model that you talk about be possible purely with currently devolved levers if the UK Government were not to work in lockstep, for example, on the child benefit policy that you identified? Is it possible for us to do that just with what is currently available under the devolution settlement?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Ross Greer
I want to pick up on what Mr Sousa said about public opinion and challenge the idea that there is wide public opposition to increasing tax. I am looking at two polls from roughly this time last year. The Scottish poll is from last December, and it showed that a majority of people—by a margin of more than two to one—are supportive of rather than opposed to the Scottish Government’s increase in the higher rate of income tax. There was a UK-wide poll just before the Liz Truss mini-budget that showed that a majority of people are in favour of increasing taxes to increase spending on, among other things, social security, which is interesting, given the attempts to demonise that. The most recent British election study shows that the vast majority of the UK electorate have left-of-centre economic values, even if they would not use a label like that, including a majority of Conservative voters.
I recognise that there is a difference between public opinion and the actual effect of public policy changes. If every general practitioner in the country was in the minority of people opposed to tax rises and half of them moved to Australia as a result of tax rises, that would clearly have an impact. Is there an issue that, when we are talking about the public discussion of taxation, as John Mason touched on, the public discourse as defined by politicians and experts is quite far removed from the majority of public opinion on core economic values?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Ross Greer
Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Ross Greer
How do those numbers—the three and seven out of 10—compare with what would usually be the case with a script remarking service?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Ross Greer
Presumably, you get far fewer appeals with script remarking than you did last year with a different system.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Ross Greer
Sorry to cut in—I am conscious of time. That is the core issue, because it comes back to the debate that we have had over the past couple of years and discussions that I have had with you on those exceptional circumstances: the young people who had a family bereavement immediately before their exam or a panic attack during their exam or whatever. I have brought some of those cases to you as casework, and we have had wider policy discussions about them. How do we make sure that the young people in those exceptional circumstances, of which there are a wide variety, get a fair opportunity?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Ross Greer
I would like to ask a few questions about the appeals system. Over the past few years, it has changed quite a bit for a variety of reasons—most obviously, but not entirely, because of the pandemic. The 2022 appeals system probably received the most positive welcome from young people and from organisations that represent them and their rights. We had an appeals system that allowed direct access for young people, that was free and that considered evidence in the round. It was not just a script remarking service.
Perhaps this is a subjective term, but we have gone back from that. We have moved away from that for this year and the system has gone back to script remarking again. Can you explain the rationale behind that decision? Specifically, what were the issues with last year’s appeals service, which was based on wider evidence of young people’s work throughout the year?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Ross Greer
Yes. Sorry.
That covers some young people but not all of them. For example—I have dealt with casework like this—there is the young person whose parent died the day before the exam but who really felt that they wanted to go in and take the exam. They are having to make a choice: “Do I think that I can perform well enough in the exam, or do I make a choice before that to take up the exceptional circumstances service?”
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Ross Greer
Did the young people on the learner panel support the change? Did organisations that represent young people’s rights support the change to the script remarking service this year? Did the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland support that?
