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 812 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Petitions
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I do not disagree at all with Ruth—she is bang on the money. The fact that more than 30 per cent of our children have additional support needs should be mentioned in the discussion, because the issue affects so many parents and families.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
It has been fantastic to hear from you all. When we have been out speaking to headteachers, my experience has been that they have been really confident in their own expertise. They have talked really enthusiastically about the positive work that they are doing and how they can build on it.
I have seen in parent councils—in my own children’s parent councils, for example—a real shift to talking about wellbeing all the time. It is not about going on a little school trip or doing the school fair anymore; wellbeing is central. The Child Poverty Action Group’s cost of the school day reports, which were mentioned earlier, have been massive in that. Parent councils have been given a toolkit.
You have talked about the initial funding allowing exploration, laying the groundwork, being able to trial different approaches to learn from and produce evidence on them, and being able to measure them better, which I found really interesting. I am particularly interested in how local authorities measure progress on health and wellbeing.
I appreciate that, on the ground in our schools, the improvements that are being made to our children and young people are very clear. However, how can we measure that on the ground? How can we ensure that those measurements cut across different schools and different local authority areas and are made at the national level so that we can consider whether we are investing money in the right places, what we need, and how we can ensure that we are giving every support that we can?
I will start with Ruth Binks and Gerry Lyons, as you guys were part of the approach.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That is great. Thank you very much. I am aware of the time, so I will pause there.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Petitions
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I agree, because mandating local authorities, headteachers and teachers to teach in a specific way is quite concerning. I have neurodiverse children, and having a wider range of options means that we can work with what is best for children as individuals.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Provisional Common Framework on Food Composition Standards and Labelling
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Does the Scottish Government have any concerns about the periodic and exceptional reviews and how they are triggered? Are you quite happy with that area?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Tackling Alcohol Harms
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
We certainly know that it is an incredibly powerful industry. Are you pre-empting any new arguments or do you expect them to be similar to last time? The evidence shows that what the industry predicted would happen did not happen. Have any new ideas, concerns or evidence that it might rely on been brought to the table?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Tackling Alcohol Harms
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Good morning, minister. I will ask about the industry. Previously, there were arguments around concerns that it would go to the wall, that people would head down to England to fill their boots up with lots of alcohol, and that people would turn to other drugs. None of those things seems to have happened, which is obviously really good and positive. Has there been any indication from industry that there would be a challenge to any further increase in minimum unit pricing?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Provisional Common Framework on Food Composition Standards and Labelling
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
How will the Scottish Parliament and other stakeholders be able to contribute to the review process? Has a process for that been set up yet?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
A couple of weeks ago, we heard strong evidence about the importance of the single electronic patient record and the need for easy, seamless and secure access to shared health and care records at the point of care. We were told that the single electronic patient record will improve continuity of care and ease frustration for patients and workers. Last week, we heard evidence from digital professionals, and good progress seems to have been made on a central cloud-based platform that will allow different systems to talk to one another. There was also mention of pilots in the data strategy engagement programme.
Can you provide a bit more information on the positive progress that we have made towards creating a national digital platform? Will you commit to keeping the committee updated on that work?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Changing how the public access primary care is key to making this a reality: alternative pathways must deliver for patients. In evidence, we have heard about long waiting lists that can encourage patients to default to going to the GP. How will the Scottish Government improve staff capacity and reduce waiting times? Is there enough investment in recruiting staff to deliver the Scottish Government’s vision?
