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 1114 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Are we confident that the report will come out in the summer?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Okay.
Paragraph 49 on page 17 states:
“As in our last audit, representative bodies of private and third sector ELC providers … report that their members have challenges in recruiting and retaining staff.”
Can you set out in a wee bit more detail why staff stability is higher in council settings than in the private and third sector? Is there any more detail on what the Scottish Government can do to improve stability across the sectors?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
I move on to funding for ELC. You mentioned that there is no comprehensive picture of how much councils have spent specifically on the expansion at national level. You mentioned the various complexities that can make it difficult for the Government to establish the overall amount that has been spent on implementing the expansion from 600 hours to 1,140 hours. Does that mean that we might never know the cost of implementing the policy?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Thank you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
My question is on the views of children, which you touched on earlier. Paragraph 103, on page 32, refers to a recommendation made in the 2020 Audit Scotland follow-up report
“that the Scottish Government considers how to include children’s views in the evaluation of the policy.”
The report explains:
“The Scottish Government is working with stakeholders on whether and how to do this in a meaningful way, given other research priorities and capacity to undertake the work, but has yet to finalise plans.”
To what extent is the Scottish Government committed to seeking the views of children as part of its evaluation work?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
It is complicated, then.
Paragraph 64 of the report states that, in 2023-24, the Scottish Government allocated £9.1 million less to councils for funded ELC than in 2022-23 and that COSLA is concerned that that reduction in funding may affect service delivery in the future. To what extent do you share COSLA’s concerns?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Good morning. Your report highlights significant recruitment and retention challenges for the ELC sector. We note that the Scottish Government is working with stakeholders to draft a strategic framework for the ELC and school-age childcare workforce and an associated action plan to address the challenge, which are due to be published in summer 2023. To what extent will the development of that framework and action plan address the challenges that the ELC sector is facing? Is it on track to be published this summer?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Do you know whether any modelling has been undertaken to establish what the backlog is likely to be if no funding is put in place to support the work to address the backlog?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Is there enough funding? Last year, it was reported that the courts service was told that justice is no longer a priority for Government ahead of the budget. Has the court service been told something similar for subsequent years? Does the current settlement represent the service being a priority?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Good morning. The report states that the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service was well placed to lead the early modelling work that informed decision making on tackling the criminal courts backlog, as it had access to large amounts of data and the appropriate skills and expertise in-house. Will you tell us more about the in-house skills and expertise and how they were used?
