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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 1489 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
We have talked a wee bit about where we are in the political cycle and you mentioned “time and tolerance”. How do you square off—as you expressed it—time and tolerance against the urgency that you have undeniably put across today and in your report, bearing in mind the political cycle and all the other potential barriers and resistance to change?
11:45Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
I hear you, convener. On that note, I want to pick up on something that Peter Bain has already laid the ground for. I will go to Pauline Walker first to finish off the thread about your level of autonomy over your budget and how that frames the sort of curriculum that you can offer.
What is your feeling now about the level of autonomy? You might want to reflect further on the comments that Peter Bain made about local authorities and the Scottish Government. I would like to quickly check with Pauline Walker and probably Barry Graham and Graham Hutton as well.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
To finish off this thread, what reform would you like to see? I do not want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but it sounds as though you would like, at a minimum, the level of autonomy and flexibility that you already have and, potentially, more.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Independent Report and Review
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for that helpful clarification.
On the point about the baking in of some of the things that we have been discussing today and the nature of the fiscal transfer system, how does what we have now compare with other fiscal transfer systems elsewhere in the world? We have previously talked about how complex the system is. Are we simply baking in complexities that will need to be managed in future—we talked about some of those earlier—or are we starting to move towards more comparable methods that are used elsewhere? I do not think that that is the case, but you are the experts.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Independent Report and Review
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
That is very helpful. Do you want to come in on that point, Professor Spowage?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Independent Report and Review
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
I have one last question, which picks up on what John Mason was talking about earlier. To what extent are we baking in recognition of the tremendous pull of London and the south-east, which I think Vince Cable described as the vortex that sucks everything in? Are we not simply recognising that that will continue to be the case—indeed, will always be the case—even allowing for a technical mechanism, which would mean that, if there was a cataclysmic event, regardless of whether we are talking about Scotland or anywhere else, we would have very little capacity to do anything about it under the system that has now been devised?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Independent Report and Review
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
Good morning. I want to go back to a comment that David Phillips made earlier about capex and the accommodation that was made by the UK Government. In some respects, I am surprised. I appreciate why the Scottish Government wanted to fix on the IPC, for all the reasons that we have discussed. However, in relation to the current fiscal challenges, I am surprised that it did not push more around capex thresholds, given that there is a very real need for capital projects and given what those could have brought to the economy in the complete absence of any of the meaningful levers to grow the economy that it might ordinarily expect to have. A lot of what we are discussing is really dancing on the head of a pin in terms of the nature of the fiscal transfer and the way that things are happening in the UK.
Do you agree with my assessment? If you had been doing that, would you also have been pushing hard for increased capital borrowing powers, with the intent of using them because there is a good reason to do so in the current economic climate?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
I will pick up that thread. Let us carry on with the same theme for a minute, and then I will bring in some other areas.
I must admit that I read your submission and have listened to your comments with great interest, Professor Humes. On the basis of what you have said, I think that we have a good sense of the role that culture plays in delivery by national Government and the agencies; you have already put that on the record. How would you go about changing that? I ask that because changing culture is extraordinarily difficult to do and very time consuming, and for that very reason, agencies—at whatever level—often get rather tired of it and move on to something else. How would you go about changing the scenario that you have depicted in your comments?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
Marina, I will bring you in.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Michelle Thomson
Following on from that, the view of the international council of education advisers is that Scotland should aim for an “egalitarian culture” in education. What does an “egalitarian culture” mean to you? Do you agree?
Perhaps Marina Shapira might like to answer that.
