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 1690 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
If you were in charge of legislation and the operating framework, would there be one particular change that you would like to make?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I will stay on this theme. An article from Tes Scotland on 7 July noted that attendance at school has historically been a problem but that Covid has exacerbated it. Covid still casts a long shadow, particularly over certain socioeconomic groupings. In your decision making around removing alternative assessment evidence, how did you reflect on there still being significant pockets of children for whom attendance has fundamentally shifted?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I have no relevant interests to declare.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
That is where I am a wee bit confused. That concept of fairness has a multitude of variables, some of which you have set out. I am merely reflecting on how perhaps another element of that fairness is the fact that, in pockets of society, there are still significant longitudinal effects of the pandemic. Attendance, which Tes Scotland—I should have quoted this figure—estimates at 90.9 per cent, is historically lower. I am merely noting that. I will let other people come in.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I want to give you the opportunity to get some stuff on the record. As you will be aware, I am new to the committee, but I have had pretty extensive experience of large so-called transformation programmes in corporate life, and they are invariably difficult, time consuming and expensive. I just want to reflect on where we are here. For a start, the decision to abolish the SQA must have had a resultant impact on your staff’s morale, so I want to get your reflections on that and hear more about what you are doing, from a leadership perspective, to maintain morale in the organisation.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
How often do you have them?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
Yes—that is fundamental.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I will leave it just now in the interests of time.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
[Inaudible.]—is what I am saying.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Michelle Thomson
I am sorry to interrupt. I absolutely get that, and you have made it clear that certain brownfield sites would not otherwise be developed. I accept that point, but it is difficult to make it without being aware of the wider environment. I will again quote a figure that I dug out a couple of years ago: the estimated loss to UK gross domestic product because of money laundering is conservatively estimated to be £262 billion every year, and the National Crime Agency says that the figure could be £100 billion more.
To my mind, we should be very concerned about that, so my question goes beyond the general principles, which, frankly, are not working. What specific discussions have you had with the UK Government to establish how it will counter tax avoidance and tax evasion? Clear warnings from the European Union in 2018 led to the EU issuing a commentary and taking further action on freeports. What recent discussions have you had?
