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
Yes. In many ways, we are determined to drive up teacher numbers so quickly to ensure that we can move forward on reducing class contact time.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I will be brief. This is an unfortunate part of the usual budget process. Opposition parties demand additional expenditure not just in my portfolio but in other Government portfolios. All Opposition members come to committee meetings such as this one and demand additional spending in portfolios, but none of the demands are included in a budget alternative so that there can be serious discussions with the finance secretary about alternatives to the budget that has been proposed. It is very easy to demand that more money be spent; it is much more difficult to have a budget settlement—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I recognise that Mr Ewing has a long-standing interest in that area, given his constituency interest. I will make two points. The first relates to what we can do through Scottish Government funding, outwith the local government settlement, to take better account of rurality. I point to the changes that we have made to the Scottish attainment challenge fund, which will now allocate funding to all 32 local authorities because we recognise that there is poverty in all areas.
As well as looking at how we distribute money, we recognise that SIMD is not a particularly useful measurement for rural areas, as Audit Scotland has pointed out in the past. We are therefore keen to look at, for example, the data on the take-up of free school meals and children in low-income families, which can provide us with a much better analysis of rurality in different areas. We are challenging ourselves to see how we can change Government funding streams to better take account of that.
11:00As Mr Ewing pointed out, local authority funding is agreed under a settlement, which is based on a formula that is agreed with COSLA. The Government is always open to evidence-based suggestions for improving the funding formula, but I stress to the committee that any fundamental change to it would properly have to come through COSLA in the first instance.
If Mr Ewing has concerns about that aspect, I will be happy to hear about them in further detail. I think that an evidence-based approach is the right way to go about that, as we have—quite rightly—to work with our partners in local government on the wider aspects that are outwith the Scottish Government’s control. I hope that that gives Mr Ewing some reassurance that we have looked at what is within our powers to ensure that we take account of rurality.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Absolutely—we can certainly look to do that. The £10 million was there for CO2 monitoring, so it was based on the costs of delivering that. For the £5 million, the level of funding is not based on thinking that we have an ask from local authorities for £5 million at this point. We are attempting to ensure that we are able to meet the needs of local authorities as they come forward.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
No—money is far too tight for us to be able simply to pluck figures out of the air. We can certainly provide the rationale, and the cost of a HEPA filter, to the committee.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I answered Mr Mundell’s question on the basis of what it takes to deliver exams. The exams will take place unless, during the exam diet, there is—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I am not holding back any information on this, Mr Mundell. I strongly refute that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Those statistics are exceptionally concerning. As I said when those figures came out, we are seeing such impacts across the United Kingdom and, indeed, further afield, but that set of statistics is concerning.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
We had sight of them very close to publication, given that they are official statistics. However, I did not need to see the statistics to know that they were going to be poor. The results of the equity audit, which took place many months previously, pointed in a direction of travel that suggested that the statistics were going to be bad. Given that they are official statistics, they went through a process in which I did not see them until very close to the time of publication. However, as I said, I did not need to see the statistics to know what the direction of travel was.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
There are areas where different portfolios in the budget have an impact on education and skills, so, yes, there are aspects of the finance and economy portfolio budgets that will have an impact on the investment in colleges.
The young person’s guarantee is an example of something that does not sit within my budget portfolio although responsibility for policy does, and we are continuing to work through how the final allocation for the young person’s guarantee will be determined and what it will be. The overall point that it is not just the education and skills portfolio that has an impact on colleges is fair.
