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 1472 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Bòrd na Gàidhlig
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Michael Marra
That is useful. I would appreciate hearing observations from the other witnesses, to set the scene on the long-term prospects of the Gaelic language. Increasing the use of Gaelic is at the core of your functions, but where are we, as a country, with regard to not just preserving but promoting and enhancing the use of the language?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Michael Marra
The discussion on this line of questioning is useful in understanding the dynamics that are at work. Obviously, colleges face a significant set of challenges in the current budget year and an 8 per cent real-terms cut in funding as part of the Scottish Government’s spending review.
Have student officers begun to have discussions with boards of management about those challenges in recent weeks? In my home city of Dundee, discussions are taking place about the closure of courses and other issues because of what the principal of Dundee and Angus College has described as a black hole in the finances. Kirsten Koss, have you been involved in such discussions? Have those issues come across your desk?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Michael Marra
How we balance those models in the next phase following the pandemic is really interesting. It sounds as though you are all struggling with that issue, but it is great to hear that you are addressing and engaging with it proactively.
How attractive is going to campus? Al Wilson has mentioned how challenging that can be in relation to travel costs and so on. Are the campuses places where people want to be? Is that work being done? College principals tell me that they have no capital budget and have no money to make the transition to net zero. In my local area, people are worried about Kingsway campus in Dundee. Gardyne campus has had a lot of money spent on it, but there is a worry about whether we can attract people to these places. Is there a gym that people can use? Are there childcare facilities? Do colleges have to do more to attract people back and to make campuses places where people want to go?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Michael Marra
Heather Innes, have you been involved in such discussions?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Michael Marra
Kirsten Koss talked about getting the voice of students heard here and in the college at the design level, so that you can say, “Here’s provision that we think we need to keep.” Are you involved at that level or is it more a case of a fait accompli, whereby you are told, “Here’s a plan that we will develop,” and you can make representations on the basis of that? Does your involvement start at an earlier stage?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Michael Marra
Could we hear from Amy Monks and Alex Bryson on the issue of involvement in those discussions?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Michael Marra
This is my last question.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Michael Marra
I would have liked a response. To me, it is a core question about the difference between large colleges and small colleges.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Michael Marra
We have heard really useful evidence so far. We are trying to understand the impact of regionalisation and the reform process that we have gone through. Industrial relations is a particular issue of concern to me, but I know that colleagues have covered that already, given how regularly the issues recur. Some of the questions on structural issues are important, too.
I want to focus on outcomes for learners. Stuart Brown commented on equity of access coming out of the reform process, in terms of the number of colleges reducing and the urban-rural divide. On college performance for 2021, the Scottish Funding Council’s most recent annual report said that the completion rate for students was 61.3 per cent. The nearest comparable figure that I have for England from the Department for Education is 89.1 per cent. My question is for Stuart in the first instance. Do you have any ideas about the gap in completion rates for qualifications and whether the structural issues that you identified might have an impact on the situation?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Michael Marra
It is a question about the differences between large colleges and small colleges, which I think gets to the core of what we are talking about. These figures, which are in the SFC report, are unique to Scotland. The difference in completion rates for large colleges is 52.7 per cent—
