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 1502 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
Convener, the other one is “Nothing about us without us.”
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
Who is responsible for monitoring the application of those recommendations? What normally happens? I am not sure about that bit.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
Where I am going with this is that good work has been going on for many years—I have seen that myself in the education system—but there are stubborn areas where there is a lack of movement. I do not want to pick on one area, because that would be unfair. However, let us say that a workforce or a type of business consistently had an underrepresentation of female employees. How would you monitor that? How would you break that cycle? We have been doing all of these other things in the past, but is there anything else that we, as a committee, could push for or suggest?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
Thank you for that reflection. As I said, I think that there is an untapped workforce out there, so it is about reaching out and encouraging but also, I suppose, incentivising. People’s attitudes towards work have changed. They want fair pay and conditions, they want access to skills, and they want up-levelling and to increase their own repertoires.
Thank you very much for that. It was very helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
Your statistic of 2.7 per cent is interesting. I think that the last census figure was sitting at just over 4 per cent, and, 10 years later, we were expecting the figure to be much higher. There is quite a significant gap. It is also interesting to hear about the higher level in graduate apprenticeships. Do you think that, in certain communities, there is a problem with the perception of apprenticeships and skills development?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
It is important that one size does not fit all. I am very keen that the decisions come from the young people themselves and that they see parity between the different pathways. What you have said is very helpful.
Dr Colquhoun, could you come in and tell me a little bit about the work of the gender commission?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
I think the cabinet secretary for that response. Having been contacted by my constituents in Glasgow Kelvin about their concerns over limitations on accessing emergency dental provision, I would like to know what discussion and actions the Scottish Government is undertaking to safeguard access to emergency dental provision in the face of challenges from omicron and other variants.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
To ask the Scottish Government what measures it is taking, including any that may be funded through its budget, that will help deliver free dental care during the current parliamentary session. (S6O-00529)
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Covid-19 (Public Inquiry)
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
I welcome the public inquiry and hope that it will be thorough. How will the Scottish Government ensure that all viewpoints and voices are heard during the inquiry, including, specifically, the voices of our asylum seeker and refugee population?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Covid-19
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Kaukab Stewart
What advice would the Scottish Government give to parents who are concerned about the omicron variant and are considering keeping their children off school?
