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 858 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Mr Marra, the fund can be spent in any way that a local authority thinks is required. I think that it is important that we give local authorities the ultimate flexibility to allow that to happen, and I certainly hope that they will take up that flexibility and use it in any way they require to enable them to meet the guidance, which is based on expert advice. We will take any individual concerns exceptionally seriously.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
The point is a valid one. There are many impacts on education from other parts of Scottish Government expenditure. Closing the poverty-related attainment gap is a key concern for Government. One of the aspects of the issue is the need to tackle child poverty at its source, and the Scottish child payment, which Stephanie Callaghan mentioned, is an example of what we are doing in that regard. There is extremely close working going on between education officials and child poverty officials in Shona Robison’s portfolio to ensure that we are working together collegiately on child poverty and education. That is one example of the important impacts of other parts of Government on education.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Yes, I do. Again, the aspects around the attainment challenge funding relate specifically to some of the responses from Audit Scotland in its work on the first phase. We absolutely took that feedback on board and listened carefully to what was said as we went through the refresh for the second phase of the SAC.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
The figures are updated regularly, but not in real time. For example, we know from the teacher censuses that we have 2,000 additional teachers overall. That is an important reflection of the funding that is going in. However, we still need to see the figures—they are not yet showing up in a teacher census because of the timing of when the census is done—on the move from temporary to permanent contracts. We will see them in the future, in the figures that come out of the teacher census.
The Government’s clear direction, along with encouragement, is that the funding has now been made permanent. We heard from local authorities that one of the reasons why the number of teachers on temporary contracts was so high was that the funding was temporary. We have now taken that challenge away from local authorities. They—not national Government—are the recruiters of teachers, but, now that the funding is in place, we will be able to encourage them to ensure that they change those temporary contracts to permanent contracts. However, that will not show up in the latest teacher census, simply because of the timing—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Yes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
We would certainly like to deliver that. It is important that the Government sets itself a very challenging target, and we want to deliver that. However, that is not something that the Government can deliver; it is something for the SNCT to look at. We must look at the planning and modelling. If the reduction is to go ahead in August, as the Government would wish it to, what does that mean? Can it be delivered? We might have to move forward on a phased basis. Would that be an easier way of changing the system? The Government is keen to move forward with that from August, but we must look at the planning and modelling to see whether that is feasible across the education system.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
As I said earlier, I appreciate that universities and colleges have expressed their disappointment at the settlement for those sectors. I point out the fact that this has been a difficult budget, for the reasons that I set out in my introductory remarks. The Government has spent the money that we have been allocated this year. We have had to make difficult choices in that.
I absolutely and fully appreciate the role that colleges and universities have played and will continue to play, particularly in our recovery from Covid. The fact that no consequentials arising from Covid are coming to the Scottish Government has presented us with challenges in those areas. We appreciate that. However, we have—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
The support that we can provide to young people in general during the school holidays has been an important development in our approach to Covid, and it is something that we are keen to move further on as we eventually see the back of Covid.
The entitlement is for those who receive free school meals. It is targeted. However, that is the minimum, and we know that some local authorities will have gone further and will go further. We can ensure that we are delivering a project that works for families on low incomes, reaching out to a diverse range of children—particularly children with disabilities or additional support needs and children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, for instance. Although the focus is on targeting those who receive free school meals, we are conscious of the need not to consider everyone as one group; it is a matter of considering what can be done within the funding to support children and young people from different backgrounds, ensuring that the support is going as wide as it can under the entitlement.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I point to the fact that we have delivered a very strong budget for education and skills. We have seen investment—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
We have seen a very important development in our investment in teachers, for example, but if Mr Rennie will point to that £100 million cut and—
