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 2212 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
I will jump back to something that the convener touched on earlier. I am keen to know the state of play in the college sector. From a previous evidence session, we know that the Scottish Funding Council keeps a risk register of colleges. Some colleges—about five or six—are colour coded black, because they are most at risk. Is that your understanding?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
I wilI rephrase the question, then. Do you think that there are colleges that are at risk of going under or closing?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
The latest figure that I have for your college, which came from 2021, says that you had £1.7 million in your ALF. At that point, my local college, South Lanarkshire, had £3,000. Last year, that college put an extra £0.5 million into its ALF, which makes it a bit of an outlier. Is that something that you have heard of?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
Why are individual colleges, such as yours, not keeping a record of your backlog?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
Have you asked the SFC to meet?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
Yes, it seems completely ludicrous that the Scottish Funding Council does not have union representation. Those are huge issues to explore, but the Funding Council will be coming in front of us, too.
My next question is for Andy Witty or Derek Smeall. Are courses being cut? If so, how many?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
For two and a half years, you have not met the Scottish Funding Council.
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
The register exists. I have not seen it, but we know that it exists. I am thinking about your discussions with your fellow principals, who you represent. When you are in meetings in colleges that are at risk of, let us say, running out of money, do any of those principals put up their hands and say, “Derek, we’re really in trouble here?”
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
I think that John Mooney wants to come in.
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s colleges 2023”
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
I know that Stuart Brown wants to come in, but first I want to explore an issue on which he might have something to say. How many job losses are we looking at in the sector? We have heard about a couple of colleges that are cutting staff, but do you see that happening across the board?
