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 1714 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Michael Marra
I would have liked a response. To me, it is a core question about the difference between large colleges and small colleges.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Michael Marra
We have heard really useful evidence so far. We are trying to understand the impact of regionalisation and the reform process that we have gone through. Industrial relations is a particular issue of concern to me, but I know that colleagues have covered that already, given how regularly the issues recur. Some of the questions on structural issues are important, too.
I want to focus on outcomes for learners. Stuart Brown commented on equity of access coming out of the reform process, in terms of the number of colleges reducing and the urban-rural divide. On college performance for 2021, the Scottish Funding Council’s most recent annual report said that the completion rate for students was 61.3 per cent. The nearest comparable figure that I have for England from the Department for Education is 89.1 per cent. My question is for Stuart in the first instance. Do you have any ideas about the gap in completion rates for qualifications and whether the structural issues that you identified might have an impact on the situation?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Michael Marra
It is a question about the differences between large colleges and small colleges, which I think gets to the core of what we are talking about. These figures, which are in the SFC report, are unique to Scotland. The difference in completion rates for large colleges is 52.7 per cent—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Michael Marra
I will leave it, convener, if I cannot give the figures—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Michael Marra
Is that transition recognised in the current SFC arrangements?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Michael Marra
My questions follow some of Mr Dey’s. I am trying to evaluate the idea of regionalisation and what the next steps are, and I am keen to focus on outcomes for young people. A lot of the evidence that we have had is about inputs, such as the number of young people attending universities. In 2020-21, the successful completion rate in Scotland was 61.3 per cent, whereas the roughly comparable figure in England was 89 per cent. Why does that gap exist?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Michael Marra
I take on board your point that it is difficult to find an exactly comparable figure, because the systems in England and Scotland are different, but it still seems to me to be a pretty stark gap in outcomes. The most equivalent figure that I could find in England was that 89 per cent of young people come out the other side with a qualification. You talked about the Scottish situation, but is there more that we can learn from models elsewhere? We are in a process of reform, so is there more that we could do to try to achieve better outcomes?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Michael Marra
I think that the horse has bolted on multiyear funding. The assumption was that we would see something about it in the spending review yesterday, but that only goes down to level 2, which means that colleges do not know how much funding they will have in the coming years. Are you renewing those calls today?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Michael Marra
Yes, I will, convener. We also have a team at the SFC that appears to be working up an alternative piece. Does anybody have any idea whether the SFC and the Scottish Government are working together on the same blueprint for the future or whether they are developing completely different plans? There seem to be a lot of plans. Do you have any idea whether the people involved are talking to one another?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Michael Marra
The budget settlement for 2022-23 has been passed on to the colleges. For almost all colleges, it means significant cuts to staffing and the programmes that they run. Principals and other senior staff have expressed concerns to me that they have received letters from the Scottish Funding Council telling them that they have to do exactly the same things that they did last year.
We have talked about the ability to flex in the longer term. However, in the short term, is the Government system responsive enough to the context in which colleges exist to enable the money that is allocated to them to reflect the job that the Government wants them to do?
