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 1100 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Liam Kerr
I have a final question on that topic, cabinet secretary. Under the bill, the chief inspector would also have to establish a strategic advisory council, which would consist of those who would be impacted by the chief inspector’s functions. What would that look like on a practical level? How would the advisory council support and, indeed, critique the chief inspector in practice?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Liam Kerr
The removal of the inspection function will leave a legacy body to support the curriculum. The committee has heard wide views on that remainder body, the possibility of overlapping roles and lack of clarity with other organisations. Is the bill sufficiently clear on that? What role will the stakeholders that Clare Hicks listed earlier have in developing the governance of the remainder organisation?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Liam Kerr
Yes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Liam Kerr
I will throw that back to you slightly, because the committee has heard that meaningful change leads to more costs. Cabinet secretary, you talked about proper engagement, and you acknowledged in answer to Ross Greer’s question that there are a lot of stakeholders. Indeed, Clare Hicks listed a number of them in response to my earlier question. New development comes at a cost; there is, for example, a cost to councils in releasing teachers to engage in the process.
The committee has heard that more is needed. Does it concern you at all that recent financial memorandums, particularly in other portfolios, have been the subjects of successful challenge? Is there value in the Government actively looking again at the financial memorandum to ensure that all those issues have been accounted for?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Liam Kerr
Good morning. On the rebranding point, which George Adam made well, I note that Fiona Robertson of the SQA told the committee that the bill creates a new organisation that has the same functions, not only in broad terms, but in quite specific terms, as the existing organisation. If it will be the same organisation with a new name, but with the same people and the same specific functions, how can you, as cabinet secretary, be sure that the issues that arose will not happen again, and that the trust that you demand will be earned and maintained? How will it be monitored?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Liam Kerr
Finally, the financial memorandum sets out the costs of the reforms, but it focuses on the obvious structural costs and concludes that they will fundamentally be “similar”. If it is accepted that the activity cost is fundamentally the same before and after reform, does that not bring us back to the point that I made at the start of this evidence session? We will have the same organisations with the same costs and, therefore, the same outcomes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Liam Kerr
Indeed.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Liam Kerr
Forgive me, Garvin Sealy; I will come to you with that question.
Gavin Yates, the bill does not specifically mention having parents on the learner committee. Can I presume that you would like that to be explicitly amended?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Liam Kerr
Megan Farr, do you want to come back in?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 October 2024
Liam Kerr
Good morning. I will stick with Ross Greer’s interesting line of questioning to Sharon McGuigan. Professor Muir recommended that the accreditation function be split from the awarding function. After initially agreeing with that, the Government reversed its position. As I understand it, the new bill will be very similar to the current regime, in that the accreditation function will be overseen by an accreditation committee, with minor changes being made to that accreditation committee’s membership. In your submission, you say that you are concerned about that. Why?
