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 1659 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, panel. Irene Stove has led on to the issue that I want to raise, and I want to bring in other panel members on that. I am interested in the insights that were gained during the pandemic about how dysregulated behaviours became more apparent and increased. To what extent have they become embedded, particularly in children in the early years? You give a lot of information in your written evidence, but this is a chance to put that on the record.
I will go to Glenn Carter first.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Suzi, do you want to come in? You reference the issue in your written evidence.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Do you agree with that, Glenn?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 28 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Thank you. Irene, I know that you have not had a chance to come in yet, but I will lead off with my next question, so you may want to pick something up from that.
In the light of what we now know, or have a strong sense of, what do you consider to be the key points of intervention post-pandemic, and where do they differ from what we might have thought were the key points pre-pandemic?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
I want to kick off the session with a bit of framing out, because the feedback that you have provided to the call for evidence is very content rich. First, at a summary level, what do you see as being the expected benefits of the presumption of mainstreaming? I ask that question because anticipated benefits were identified when the policy was put in place, and we now have a lot of data to draw on. That is my first question, which is an open, framing question.
Secondly, what do you see as being the main impacts of implementation of the policy on children with complex needs? I suspect that we will want to get into a lot of detail, so you can keep your answers at a summary level. What do you see as being the expected benefits, and what have the impacts been of implementation of the policy? I invite everyone on the panel to respond.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, everybody, and thank you for attending—[Interruption.] I hope that you can hear me now—can you?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Exactly. Having such a discussion and fleshing out the position of all the political parties could be helpful.
My next question comes on the back of the convener’s comments about single-year versus multiyear funding and what the Scottish Fiscal Commission had to say about that in its fiscal sustainability report. Does the Scottish Government collect any statistics on the sunk costs of doing all the monitoring and assessment on a year-by-year basis? It strikes me that that is not only inefficient but extremely expensive. Do you collect any stats on that? In effect, it is money lost.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
It strikes me that it would be helpful to look at that in a quantitative as well as a qualitative way, because it exemplifies the inefficiency that plays into some of our other costs.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 20 February 2024
Michelle Thomson
I have previously asked about the ScotWind funding. To be honest, I was a wee bit disappointed when I read the Scottish Government’s response to the relevant part of our report. It said:
“Consideration will be given to how future revenues will be deployed.”
The point that I was trying to make was that I do not want consideration to be given to how future revenues will be deployed. First, I want there to be recognition of the importance of setting up a sovereign wealth fund. Secondly, I want consideration to be given to costs, implications and process. Thirdly, I want a specific commitment to be made that fiscal rules will be set.
Although I accept that you cannot bind your successors, I would like to hear a commitment that, this session, you will set aside, say, 5 per cent of all moneys. That would recognise the revenue challenges that you face today and also look to the longer term to provide the building blocks for fiscal sustainability. Will you comment on the response that I highlighted, as it strikes me that it misses the point altogether?
