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 1100 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Liam Kerr
Dr Shapira, you talked earlier about teacher capacity. There has been a lot of talk about that down the years. We have in our papers a reference to a 2013 study about improving the capacity of teachers and the necessity for it, at an individual level and at a structural and cultural level. Looking backwards, can you describe how effective efforts have been to improve the capacity of teachers? Looking forwards, where should the focus be to improve capacity in the system, particularly if, as Professor Stobart said, what must not happen is adding without taking away?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Liam Kerr
Good morning, panel. Professor Humes, picking up on comments that you made earlier, the OECD has suggested that the Scottish system might be too heavily governed. Do you recognise that as an issue? If so, how does it square, if at all, with the principle of subsidiarity, which you described earlier as decisions being made at the lowest suitable level and which is core to curriculum for excellence?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Liam Kerr
Out of interest, why did you take the lower end of the scale? Why did you not come to the committee with data that would enable us to say, “That’s what we’re going to need and we can rely on that”? By taking the lower end, have you not instilled a lack of confidence in the committee with regard to its ability to scrutinise?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Liam Kerr
Last week, Children’s Hearings Scotland told us that, although it had embarked on a panel recruitment campaign, it did not meet its expectations or what it considers to be its needs with regard to new panel members. Do you have any thoughts on what impact that failure to recruit might have on the bill’s ultimate implementation? What are you going to do about it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Liam Kerr
On a similar note, the updated financial information for the bill estimates that the number of additional hearings will be 42 per cent higher than the figure in the original financial memorandum. Why was the initial estimate so low? Does the Scottish Government expect any issues to arise from the significantly increased figures? Why should the committee have any confidence that the new figures are correct?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Liam Kerr
I am very grateful.
There are some cross-border issues with the bill, such as issues around the regulatory regimes pertaining to cross-border placements. There has been increased funding in the new financial memorandum, which should lead to fewer cross-border placements. What impact will that have on the legal aspects of cross-border issues, if any? Before you presented the latest financial memorandum to the committee, what meetings took place between you and your counterpart in the UK Government on that point?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Liam Kerr
I declare my interest as a practising solicitor. Concerns have been raised that the already under-resourced legal profession may be required to provide even more with less if and when the bill comes in. What have you done as minister to research the extra requirements that may be put on the legal profession, the impacts of that and the profession’s ability to meet those requirements?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Liam Kerr
Before Mr Rooney comes in on the work that has been going on over the summer with the agencies, could you confirm, minister, that those are agencies in the legal profession, such as the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates? Have the conclusions of that work been factored in to the financial memorandum that is before the committee? If not, I presume that the minister is asking the committee to approve certain things that we do not have the data on.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Liam Kerr
Do you know when that meeting might take place? It seems to me that we will have a potential change to the situation with cross-border placements but, as yet, there has been no meeting. The meeting to discuss the issue did not take place prior to this committee considering the new financial memorandum. Do you know when it will?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Liam Kerr
The hearings system working group proposed the establishment of salaried chairs and paid volunteers. Last week, Children’s Hearings Scotland told us that there is
“an inherent fragility in ... running a statutory service with the good will of volunteers.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 25 October 2023; c 30.]
However, there is a counter view that having salaried chairs and paid volunteers could reduce the number of people who come forward. What do you think the impact of that would be? What is your thinking on the proposals?
