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 921 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Bill Kidd
What are the panel’s views on how structural reform of the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Education Scotland will support better outcomes for children and young people? I do not mean this in the wrong way, but it is really supposed to be about children and young people rather than the process itself. How will that deliver?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Bill Kidd
He was just agreeing with what I said; that was all.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Bill Kidd
When I attended school, I learned one thing, which was to listen to what people are saying. I have heard a great deal of what you are saying, but I am still going to ask my questions, because we are in the Scottish Parliament and we need to have a bit of talk about politics and how it is handled. We know about the roles of national Government and local government in supporting policy change in education and even driving it. How would the panel suggest balancing those traditional, top-down implementation processes with more bottom-up approaches? I know that a bit of that has been covered already, but how do you think that the two might be mixed together?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Bill Kidd
Is there a danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water if we change it too radically, too quickly?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Bill Kidd
No. That is fine. Thank you very much for that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Bill Kidd
Okay—thank you for that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Bill Kidd
Thank you.
Following on from that, under section 49(1), the Scottish ministers will have powers to intervene. Section 49 provides that the Scottish ministers may establish by regulations a body with a view to its becoming a category 1 regulator. The section also specifies circumstances under which the Scottish ministers may directly authorise and regulate legal business. The bill states that ministers must obtain the consent of the Lord President before making such regulations and, even then, may make them only if they believe that doing so is necessary as a last resort.
Again, stakeholders have called for the removal of the provision, asserting that it interferes with the rule of law and threatens the independence of the legal profession, which is quite a serious issue. What are your reflections on those assertions? Is the Scottish Government considering removing the provision? If not, is it considering making an amendment to it?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Bill Kidd
Thank you—that is comprehensive. Are you still in talks with the Law Society over the issue, given the questions that it has raised?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Bill Kidd
On that basis, although Scottish Government ministers would be making an intervention, that would be to redirect the powers to the Lord President. Is that correct?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 November 2023
Bill Kidd
Thank you for your responses so far, minister. I want to ask a question about making changes to regulatory functions.
Paragraph 23 of schedule 2 provides that where a regulator has acted or failed to act in a way that has had, or is likely to have, an adverse impact on the observance of any of the regulatory objectives, and the matter cannot be addressed adequately by the Scottish ministers taking any of the measures mentioned in the bill, such as setting performance targets or imposing a financial penalty, the Scottish ministers may make regulations to change or remove some or all of the functions of the regulator. That sounds quite dramatic. Additional requirements must be met before such regulations may be made, including sharing them with consultees and laying them in draft before the Scottish Parliament.
Stakeholders who appeared before the committee have suggested that schedule 2 should be deleted in its entirety, given that they are also calling for the deletion of section 20, to which schedule 2 relates. Do you have any further reflections on the matter?
