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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 2474 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Universities and Colleges Funding 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
The Scottish Conservatives’ position on that, as you well know—I do not want to have it mischaracterised—is that we also support paid tuition fees. However, we understand that issues arise with those. When someone like Sir Peter—who is widely respected not only in Scotland or the United Kingdom but throughout the world—raises issues around other ways in which Scottish students might be able to get university places, we think it worth having a calm and considered debate. I am glad that you have done so, but when I heard the First Minister’s response I thought that perhaps he had not read the article. He immediately shut down the argument.
None of us is saying that there should not be paid tuition; we are saying that we should look at other ways in which we can expand revenue streams for Scottish universities. I am not saying that that should involve Scottish families paying tuition fees for their sons and daughters to go to Scottish universities, but if it did, that can only be a good thing, surely.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Universities and Colleges Funding 2023-24
Meeting date: 17 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
That would not make sense—no.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
Sorry—I am a bit confused. You say that you accept that there are inaccuracies.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
Those costs are critical to the functioning of what is set out in statute. Will the Government therefore meet the funding requirements in order to make that happen?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
That is a significant comment: the Government will fund all those functions.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
I am trying to unpack what COSLA told us about the cost implications arising from what is in the financial memorandum accompanying the bill. As has been said, COSLA highlights the impact on social services from the inaccuracy of the costs.
I am still not clear on whether you accept what COSLA says—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
Okay, convener. I will move on.
Minister, do you also accept the issue with regard to the difficulty—perhaps, in COSLA’s view, the impossibility—of transferring savings that will, theoretically, occur in the criminal justice system into local government, as the convener outlined? What is your response to that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
Discrepancies.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
All that I will say to you, minister, is that the recent record of recruitment shows a fall-off in the number of volunteers, particularly in the past few years, so there is a real risk that it will not be possible to recruit the number of volunteers required. It would be responsible of Government to consider what that scenario might look like, given the demand that will be put on the children’s hearings system.
What about training? Are you completely satisfied that the children’s hearings system has the capacity to give the high quality of training that will be required, given the fact that it will be dealing with 16 and 17-year-olds and, perhaps, a different range of offences?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 May 2023
Stephen Kerr
There will be an increase in demand for children’s hearings of somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent, will there not?
