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 385 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Jamie Hepburn
We are engaging through the Scottish Funding Council, Colleges Scotland and directly with colleges to see—and this kind of goes back to the point—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Jamie Hepburn
It might be better to allow me to answer the questions that you ask me, Mr Marra.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 2 November 2022
Jamie Hepburn
Simply put, that can be done through regular dialogue. I am happy to provide detail of the frequency with which I speak with Colleges Scotland and all the different unions in the college environment. That is an opportunity for representatives in the college sector to raise any issue that they want to raise with me, but also for me to reflect things back to them. So, if you—or any other members of the Scottish Parliament—want to make me aware of things that should be highlighted, I am more than willing to hear them. I am also willing to hear directly from individual colleges and to urge others to reflect on those examples.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Jamie Hepburn
I thank my friend Bob Doris for making best use of my time, as he always seeks to do.
Those were concerns that we had. They were on the basis of the broad thrust of the concerns that we laid out in relation to the potential unequal balance that could exist between the two Administrations. As things had been laid out, there was always the potential for a change of approach from the UK Government. The UK Government has certainly been consistent in talking about the independence of ARIA; I take that at face value and do not doubt the good faith with which that has been laid out. However, as things stood, there was the potential for that to change with different Administrations.
Although ARIA will be a creature of statute and could be subject to alteration in due course, we will now have in place a memorandum of understanding that lays out the clear independence of operation of the organisation—not just from the Scottish Government and the other devolved Administrations, which seemed to be the concern of the UK Government, but from the UK Government. The memorandum of understanding takes account of those particular concerns.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill
Meeting date: 27 October 2021
Jamie Hepburn
Convener, it might be a while since you took up the role but, as this is my first time at the committee since you did so, I congratulate you on assuming the convenership of the committee. I look forward to working with the committee and you in that role.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about the Scottish Government’s perspective on the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill. As I stated in my letter to the committee, the Scottish Government is supportive of the overall policy intent of the ARIA bill—namely, to create a new agency with independence from Government influence and with minimal bureaucracy in order to give it maximum freedom to achieve its aim of supporting visionary high-risk and high-pay-off research and development. However, the Scottish Government has had some fundamental issues with the bill that creates ARIA. The UK Government failed to consult fully on the bill before its introduction in the House of Commons. Since being given sight of the bill and the related policy statement, the Scottish Government’s ask has been consistent. We seek involvement in the agency through the chief scientific adviser for Scotland and removal of the reservation that is currently in the bill.
As you know, reservation is a significant step that the Scottish Government will recommend to the Scottish Parliament in only the most compelling circumstances. I believe that the Parliament would expect nothing less. The key reason that the UK Government has given for including a reservation in the bill has been that it is to create distance between ARIA and the Government. The Scottish Government has always recognised the need for that and, as I have set out, supports that. However, reservation has always seemed to be a heavy-handed and unequal approach to creating distance from the Government.
The committee will have seen the LCM in the name of the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, which laid that out as our position. I had intended to attend this meeting to reiterate our position. However, I am very glad to announce that the UK Government has finally recognised that reserving ARIA is an unnecessary step.
Two days ago, I agreed in principle with my UK counterpart, George Freeman, a memorandum of understanding and an amendment to remove the reservation from the ARIA bill. The memorandum of understanding will lay out very clearly the principle that ARIA will operate independently of ministerial direction from any Government. It will also contain arrangements for consultation of the chief scientific advisor for Scotland on ARIA as an alternative to board membership, which the Scottish Government has been willing to compromise on to come to a resolution.
George Freeman wrote to me yesterday afternoon, following our conversation, to agree such an approach, and I responded to him this morning. In the light of that, I anticipate that, subject to Cabinet agreement, the Scottish Government will seek to lodge a supplementary LCM recommending consent to the ARIA bill as soon as the UK Government has tabled an amendment in the House of Lords to remove the reservation from the bill. We will sign the memorandum of understanding as soon as possible once it is confirmed that the other devolved Administrations are also content.
I trust that the committee will agree that that is a very positive development.
