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 502 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Oliver Mundell
But one faces a lower parliamentary hurdle than the other in terms of the scrutiny and the kind of process it has to go through.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Oliver Mundell
In your view, the case for using that procedure would diminish over time and it would be less proportionate if you were planning in advance for an emergency. Is that a fair comment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Oliver Mundell
Do you think that there is a difference or a sort of sliding scale? Passing new emergency legislation requires the full parliamentary process. Does having a provision just to bring the legislation into force not lower the bar? Should we question whether that is proportionate for the scale of measures that the legislation enables. We are talking about pretty fundamental rights to education being removed. Is scrutinising the ability to bring it into force enough?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Oliver Mundell
I would be interested, because there is obviously a different type of consultation. In effect, a member of the Parliament is relying on a different type of consent to bring something into force than they would need if they were putting the legislation on to the statute book and having it sit there. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that and anything more you could provide, but I do not want to push you if you do not feel comfortable. Anything from a colleague would be helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Oliver Mundell
At the start of the pandemic, we were all willing to tolerate things in legislation that we might not normally have been comfortable with. Have things moved on? Obviously, partnership is important, but so, too, is proportionality. I have been listening carefully and, from what you are saying, it seems that you do not feel that the bill is proportionate to the scale of the task or the degree of emergency that we face. I am happy for anyone to comment.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Oliver Mundell
Has something gone wrong in that communication when senior people in a wide range of organisations are, in effect, saying that the Government’s proposed legislation is an overreach? Does that not break down some of the trust, partnership and confidence that has been built up in the past two years? Does that not put public health at risk?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Oliver Mundell
One has a lower hurdle to get over. That is my point. One has a lower—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Oliver Mundell
Would a bring-it-into-force provision meet that test?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Oliver Mundell
Before we begin taking evidence, I wish to raise a point and seek your clarification, convener.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Oliver Mundell
I suspect that I am not the only member of the committee who has been concerned by reports that, after more than a year, the Scottish Government is still withholding from publication the draft version of the report that it received from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development last January and its response to that report.
Furthermore, I have heard that a parliamentary statement on the report by Professor Ken Muir is now planned, and it has been reported that senior leadership at the Scottish Qualifications Authority and other education bodies have already seen an advance draft of the report. I am not aware of that courtesy having been extended to this committee. This looks like a repeat of the situation with the OECD report, in which unaccountable organisations that are currently failing our young people are extended an opportunity to review and perhaps influence the findings of those reports without any checks and balances.
Having been a member of the committee for a number of years, I believe that it is insulting that such documents have not been made available to the committee and that the practice of excluding Parliament and denying us the fullest opportunity to exercise our scrutiny function diminishes the work that we do. I find that unacceptable. I believe that we should urgently request those documents.
I know that we will discuss our work programme in private today, but I am increasingly concerned that too much of our education policy is decided behind closed doors, not least because of the culture of secrecy and lack of transparency at the heart of the Scottish National Party’s approach. It is important that the public knows that the committee is alive to those issues and that we are taking our job of scrutiny seriously. Ideally, I would like to see a decision taken to move today’s discussion of our work programme into public to allow this urgent matter to be addressed. If that is not possible, convener, I would like your assurance that the matter will be put on the public agenda for next week’s meeting.
