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
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
But there is no more money per year.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
Cabinet secretary, you have already acknowledged to the committee that that investment will take us back to the number of teachers that we had in 2008, if we can reach that. That is not even as many teachers as your Government first took on in 2007. The challenge that we face now is the greatest that we have ever faced.
We have very limited statistical evidence so far. I would like to see an awful lot more. Time and again, we have called for a focus on evidence. My question is how proportionate your response has been to the scale of the challenge. It does not seem to me as though, in your discussions with the finance secretary, you have been able to make or win the argument for more resource or for a more proportionate response to the challenge. Is that fair? The draft budget is a repetition of previous plans that do not really take into account the scale of the challenge that we face.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
Perhaps it is just me. Apologies.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
Therefore, contrary to what the First Minister announced yesterday, that is not funding for active ventilation in school but just an additional £5 million on top of the previous moneys that have been allocated, which the cabinet secretary said have resulted in very limited action. That is very disappointing and, frankly, completely contrary—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
If I may speak, cabinet secretary.
It is very contrary to what the First Minister said yesterday. In December, Labour moved a motion, which SNP and Green colleagues voted against, to set out £30 million in total, which could have procured two HEPA filters for each classroom in Scotland. Is that not the kind of action that should be taken now? We are talking about the budget today. The cabinet secretary should recognise that—she should listen to the First Minister when she says in the chamber that it should happen—and argue for £30 million to be put in place in the budget in order to procure those filters.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
I think that it would be useful to follow up on some of the issues around data, cabinet secretary. The only data that we have so far regarding the impact of the pandemic on attainment and school achievement are the deeply concerning figures that came out regarding primary school attainment levels. They show that attainment is at its lowest-ever level and that the gap between the poorest kids and the rest is at its widest ever. You would share those concerns, would you not?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
When did you first have sight of those results? They were published on 14 December, and it was trailed in little snippets in various speeches and announcements that you expected the data to be very concerning for us all.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
Are you saying that the sight of the emerging evidence about the scale of the impact did not really make much difference to the approach that you took? It has been well recognised by colleagues and trade unions that the Covid recovery plan is a repackaging of previous announcements such as pupil equity funding and attainment challenge funding—although there has been a £20 million cut to that. The amounts of money are the same across a number of years. Does the scale of the challenge not require something of a different proportion to what you were doing three years ago?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
That is only because this is an extra year. The funding has been spread across another year, but there is no more money per year than there was in the previous parliamentary session.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Michael Marra
As you have acknowledged, the statistics are concerning for all of us—you called them “exceptionally concerning”. It is important that we get more evidence about the impact of the pandemic. What research have you commissioned to inform your policy and decisions about the recovery in education, particularly in relation to secondary schools? You will acknowledge that there is a gap—perhaps an understandable one, in your view—in the data at that level. What other structural research into the impact of the pandemic can the committee expect to be made available to us?
