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 979 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
That is very positive. Thank you for that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
I am aware that we do not have a lot of time left; I will ask about workforce recruitment and retention, which has been mentioned, and about how important that is. The Promise Scotland submission highlights the workforce’s important role in reforming the system, but a survey that the Scottish Social Services Council published on 31 October found that all local authorities, bar one, were finding it difficult to fill social work vacancies, for the very good reasons that there are too few applicants with the required experience or qualifications and that the pay is less competitive than that of other employers.
The minister has told us that a workforce improvement plan is being developed and is due to be published in 2024. What involvement have you and your colleagues had in developing the proposal to move things to a better place?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
That has been very well presented here, on a public platform.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
Claire Burns, do you believe that the involvement of the organisations and offices that you represent would have a beneficial impact on the delivery of the report’s content?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
Does anybody else wish to add anything?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
That is very helpful.
I will ask Fraser McKinlay a question on the back of that. To what extent are the aims of the Promise still achievable if workforce and capacity issues remain as they are now?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
There have been very interesting responses to what has been asked so far.
As you will have heard, I asked pretty much the same question to the previous panel. What is the impact of recruitment and retention issues in the social work workforce on care-experienced people? Can you show us any signs of how that has manifested itself?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Bill Kidd
I will add a question for Nicola Killean and Claire Burns. The minister told us about a workforce improvement plan that is being developed and is due to be brought forward next year. I am not asking whether you think that that will work, but are people from your backgrounds being involved enough to ensure that the plan affects care-experienced young people when it is eventually delivered?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Bill Kidd
I will try to ask some questions that are easy to answer, which should not do any harm. Having listened to everything that the witnesses have said, I am rather sorry that I am not going to school now rather than when I went to school—I did not always go to school, but I should have. This is me being quick, by the way, convener.
I listened to the concerns that were expressed about the provision of vocational qualification routes and the lack of available staff to fill such posts, which Peter Bain mentioned. How can teachers and headteachers change perceptions among pupils and their carers—their parents or whoever—about the value of vocational qualifications? To my knowledge, the approach has always been that people should go for their highers to get on in society, because that is the only way forward. How do you convince people—if they need convincing—that the vocational route is the correct route to follow at school?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Bill Kidd
Thank you, Mr Withers, for an interesting background and for the review, of course.
On the back of what you have just been talking about, the review suggested the importance of setting national priorities. You might not want to point the finger at who should take responsibility for that, but what are your thoughts on how those priorities could and should be divided? What should be taken into account?
