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 1878 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Bob Doris
You have made that point really well. This might be absolutely the right thing to do, but we do not want to give people rights in principle if the reality is that those rights can never be exercised without a substantial increase in resources when it is not clear where those would come from.
Rebecca Williams and Tracey Francis, do you share that concern?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Bob Doris
Okay. Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Bob Doris
Before I bring Dr Whelan in, can I nudge you a little bit more on that? If the bill is required, surely many more young people will be captured, including transitioning students who are off the radar just now or do not have the plans that are required. Do you agree that, if the bill works, the figure of 29 per cent will go up quite substantially, so there must be significant resource issues?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Bob Doris
There was an interesting exchange near the start of the meeting when I asked Anne-Marie Sturrock whether the bill was required. Anne-Marie and Dr Whelan had mentioned that it will bring clarity and will more consistently identify young people with disabilities or additional support needs, irrespective of the current position with local authorities. What might the resource impact be on colleges and universities? If the expectation is that more young people will be identified more regularly and more consistently, will colleges and universities be able to support the planning process by taking part in meetings and ensuring that the agreed support is in place for students, who will come from multiple local authorities? I know that further education has more of a footprint in schools than higher education perhaps does, but are we anticipating additional workload? Has that been quantified? Is further and higher education in a position to deliver on the significant expectations in the legislation? Annie-Marie Sturrock, have you given any thought to that?
10:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Bob Doris
Okay. I have one final question to ask. Mike Corbett, I will come to you first and will give everyone the opportunity to respond if they wish.
We know that most young people will come through a local authority route or an education route, but not necessarily everyone will. Young people going to university may have left school, and there is that flux during the summer, so local authorities might not always be best placed to take the lead. There is an expectation, however, that local authorities would take the lead in transition cases. Should that always be the case, or is more flexibility required?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Bob Doris
Thank you for adding that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Bob Doris
That is incredibly helpful; I just want to make sure that Colleges Scotland and the further education sector have thought about quantifying what additional resource might be required from their end. Has consideration been given to quantifying that additional resource?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Bob Doris
For once, convener, it is just a supplementary.
I will go to Anne-Marie Sturrock first. The committee is trying to wrestle with what you and Mike Corbett have talked about. Mike said that, although a statutory right to a co-ordinated support plan exists, those plans are not produced consistently or regularly.
Anne-Marie, you suggested—I hope that you are right—that the framework means that there will be a more consistent, streamlined approach to ensuring that all young people get all the rights and transitions to which they are entitled. If that is not happening with co-ordinated support plans, however, why would it be different under the bill?
You do not have to answer to that; I am simply reflecting a point that the committee is wrestling with, which is why I want to give you the opportunity to say a little bit more about it. That is all.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Bob Doris
I am not remotely trying to be awkward. Just because additional resource may be required does not mean that it is not the right thing to do. I am just trying to tease out the realities of the legislation.
Dr Whelan, will you answer from a university perspective?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Bob Doris
That is reasonable.
Louise Storie, I apologise if I am misquoting you—I have got mixed up with the scribbles in front of me—but I think that you said that schools will have different priorities in relation to transitions, young people with more complex needs and the resource implications and resource pressures. You are generally supportive of the legislation, but, if resources are finite, might that prioritisation mean that some young people have plans on paper without the resources to make them meaningful, and that other young people with more complex needs get a more significant transition? Do you have any concerns about that?
