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 1122 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
Sara, would you like to come in?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
Thank you very much. I just want to finish with what, for me, summed up how PEF funding can work very well. When we visited the school in Dundee on Monday, we talked to a wee boy who described what he was like before and after the intervention. He said that, when he used to get things wrong in class, he would lose his temper, stamp his feet and be out in the corridor, shouting and bawling; now he just rubs the wrong thing out and starts again. I thought that that brilliantly summed up how that kind of intervention can work and make a real difference for young people. We just need more of that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
No—your answer had good precision. Do you want to come in next, Jim?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
It was very good. Do you want to respond, Maureen?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
Is that what you mean when you refer to “regional or national forums” for sharing best practice? Why do they not exist just now?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
Oliver Mundell has a point, as there has been deep frustration that the Government has not been as open as it should have been over the OECD process. It is important that that is highlighted, that the committee takes a direct interest in it, that we have a public session on it and that we seek evidence from the Government and appeal to it to give us the additional information that we have been asking for for months.
It would be wrong if the media scrutiny on the issue was not replicated with scrutiny by this committee, because we have a massive responsibility, so I would like to have a public session. However the matter was brought up, it is important that we take our role seriously, actually scrutinise the Government and seek the openness that teachers and pupils deserve, so I would like to have a session on the issue at a future committee meeting.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
Thank you for all your evidence. It has been compelling.
I am interested in being precise about what we want to change about the attainment funding. We are spending hundreds of millions of pounds. We need to know that that is working effectively. I take all the points that have been made about the wider society, but hundreds of millions of pounds is being spent directly with councils and schools and we need to ensure that it is being spent effectively. The written submissions refer to things that could be done and improvements that could be made, and I would like to draw them out. Perhaps I can start with Louise Goodlad. What precisely would you improve about how attainment funding is used and allocated, Government policy and so on? What would you like to change?
11:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
Bob Doris rightly pointed out that the PEF will have three-year funding, but in your submission, you say that it is not clear whether that will feed through to you yourselves getting three-year funding.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Willie Rennie
Why is that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 9 February 2022
Willie Rennie
I was going to finish there but your last point is interesting. What precisely are we not doing? What is happening in England that is not happening here in terms of measurement?
