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 1007 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Bill Kidd
That makes a lot of sense. College and university principals would want to be involved in that. Is further and higher education union representation being considered?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Bill Kidd
Yes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Bill Kidd
It has been interesting to hear about the different angles and directions that things are taking and will take, but forget about all that. This is the Parliament and we are politicians—[Laughter.]—and we have to think about making policy on AI.
Curriculum reform has been mentioned, which gives us an opportunity to stick our oar in the water while we still have the right to do so, before AI overtakes us. How good is current guidance for educators and researchers on how to use AI ethically and effectively? You have covered very broadly how AI exists already in our society, in particular from the education perspective. Is there enough guidance from the Government on how educators and researchers will use AI? Should the Government do that, or should it develop outside Government?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Bill Kidd
There is nothing at all. Okay. Helena Good is nodding.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Bill Kidd
That is very interesting.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Bill Kidd
I suppose that that begs questions about curriculum reform and how AI will impact on it. Some people are aware and are working with AI—even so, as Chris Ranson said, there are a lot of elements that must be worked through—but some people have no awareness or depth of knowledge, and are supposed to be leading young people. That needs to be impacted on, does it not?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Bill Kidd
That is really helpful. Thank you all.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Artificial Intelligence and Education
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Bill Kidd
Do you believe that there is something there, but not very much, and that it needs to be improved and expanded?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
That is very positive. Thank you for that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
I am aware that we do not have a lot of time left; I will ask about workforce recruitment and retention, which has been mentioned, and about how important that is. The Promise Scotland submission highlights the workforce’s important role in reforming the system, but a survey that the Scottish Social Services Council published on 31 October found that all local authorities, bar one, were finding it difficult to fill social work vacancies, for the very good reasons that there are too few applicants with the required experience or qualifications and that the pay is less competitive than that of other employers.
The minister has told us that a workforce improvement plan is being developed and is due to be published in 2024. What involvement have you and your colleagues had in developing the proposal to move things to a better place?
