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 2078 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
I have a couple of follow-on questions. Purely in terms of delivery, if the deadline was 10 years hence and there were no electoral cycles, the approach that one would choose to adopt—and public pressure—might be different to what they will be given intervening events such as elections. How will you square the nuanced approach and the pressure that there will be for demonstrable delivery, cabinet secretary? People will be crying out for real, evident change but with a nuanced approach against a 10-year delivery plan. Perhaps you can reflect on some of the complexities that you see in that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for that. You are right that we will come on to talk about the reform agenda.
I will follow on from that. In terms of a “lean” to the budget, a specific public sector pay policy has not been published. How will you support agencies that are struggling to set budgets and, as I commented earlier, where there is a real cost to the savings that they need to make? What is your role in supporting them—without the framing of a public sector pay policy?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
Yes, we did.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
Of course, that is the case not just in schools but in other key stakeholder groupings.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
I will move on. One of the other things that has been talked about is empowerment in the system and a kind of licence to operate, if you like, and how the Scottish Government can create an environment in which teachers are empowered, given that there is a part in the middle where COSLA and local authorities sit. My question is almost from a leadership perspective. What leadership can you put in place to ensure that teachers are empowered? Of course, that translates all the way through the system.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
In relation to the earlier discussions about student numbers, I checked the UCAS clearing table, which shows that, in 2019, there were 28,750 Scotland-domiciled students. Setting aside a range of other factors, which we all understand, if there was a reduction of 1,200 from the 2023 figure, which was 30,050, that would take us back to 28,850, which compares very favourably with the 28,750 in 2019. I thought it that would be helpful to put that on the record. Do you have anything to add to that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
Absolutely—fair dos.
I want to explore that a bit more. I absolutely agree with you about the constraints on pay and the difficulty of the budget, but how specifically will you be able to support agencies in squaring that circle—to use a horrible analogy? They will be required to deliver to budget—exactly as the Scottish Government is required to do—and to make those changes at the same time and manage the very real issues that they have with the cost base. My question is really about how you see your role in supporting agencies with those conflicting demands.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25 and Education Reform
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
Last week in the chamber, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Michael Matheson, gave a speech with which I strongly agreed. He emphasised the need for culture change and talked about some of the work that is being done on that. I intervened to comment that, because of my previous life experience, I know that changing culture as part of general change programmes is the hardest thing to do. Do you think that the culture within the civil service, national agencies and local authorities needs to change? Do you back up what Professor Humes from the University of Stirling described in a previous evidence session as “a cosy conformity” in the culture? If so, in what ways does it need to change?
Meeting of the Parliament
Education
Meeting date: 17 January 2024
Michelle Thomson
This morning, during the meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, I heard our colleague Liam Kerr referencing the Conservatives’ new deal for teachers. Is that publicly available or on the Conservatives’ website? Perhaps the member could get a copy to me.
