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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 732 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
Colleagues have probably covered the areas that I was thinking about. I wanted to ask about the policy intention and advocacy. I am feeling a bit confused. I care about all children in all countries, but there is an issue about how we influence what is happening in England if the standards are not being met there. With the best will in the world, if we do not make the changes that are in the regulations, children will still be placed here. The proposed changes include the addition of the advocate so that the child’s rights are better supported and their voice can be heard.
This might be a silly question, but I am going to ask it, because it feels like an important topic. How will amending the regulations help the practice in England, which you are saying does not seem to be rights based? Can you lay that out for me so that I can understand it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
As well as parliamentary scrutiny, scrutiny from local authority politicians is important. As you said, this is not just about the Government; it is also about local authorities.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
Thank you. That is helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
You mentioned that Education Scotland will provide constructive challenge to local authorities. We all look for simple answers and for a uniform approach to be taken, because that can make things easier to measure. We need to have local variation, but we also need there to be challenge when things are not successful. Can you say a bit more about the actual mechanism for that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
What would that mean for a child in England?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
I appreciate that you have already said that the proposed children’s care and justice bill is the place to properly sort this out, and I think that we all agree that the use of deprivation of liberty orders should be reduced to a bare minimum and that they should be used only in cases where they are absolutely essential.
This question follows on from what Ross Greer asked, and I ask it to have the issue clear in my mind. The status quo will not to stop cross-border placements from happening. Do you agree that it will not decelerate their use either?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
I want to ask about the role of attainment advisers in more detail. Elizabeth Sommerville, you spoke earlier about taking down barriers in relation to both the local authority and the schools. Could you tell us a bit more about the degree to which attainment advisers are working with schools or with local authorities? It is always helpful to our understanding to hear examples of specific bits of work.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
I am sorry to interrupt, but what is your understanding of why support workers would not be accessing those resources? Is that a question of time and workload? Do they not have the same space for professional development?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
I am trying to understand what might go wrong and why somebody would say that there was an issue there. Is that a case of someone who is further removed from the school placing value on research that might not necessarily be appropriate to the pupil? Does that make sense? I am trying to understand where the comment that I mentioned came from.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
That is helpful. While we are scrutinising and challenging things and looking for things that we can do better, it is always important not to lose sight of the diligence, professionalism and commitment in our schools. We have heard about great examples of that.
When the convener, Michael Marra and I spoke with teachers on, er, Monday—forgive me for forgetting; it has been a long week already—we heard fantastic examples of work. I was particularly impressed by the work that is going on to bring in parents to assist with literacy; an example was given of a successful film club that had been run in a library.
One challenge that teachers raised was about the research that policy is built on. One teacher described some research as flawed, because it is not disaggregated by ethnicity. They also said that some research that is being used undervalues and underplays the importance of support for learning workers. In that teacher’s school, English is a second language for many children, and support for learning workers is crucial. An example was given of a young pupil being given an assessment in Turkish and, to quote the teacher, smashing it. If he had been given his assessment in English, the outcome would have been different. I am keen to hear your reflections on how we ensure that the research is not flawed and that policies are appropriate for all our children in schools.
