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 708 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 February 2023
Graeme Dey
I accept that argument to an extent, but, with respect, the NHS and other entities will always say that, if we gave them more money, they could fix the problem. From what we have heard throughout the meeting, there are some cultural and systemic problems that need to be addressed outwith purely financial resource and what flows from that. Is that not the case?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Graeme Dey
Apologies, convener.
At any stage during the budget process, did any MSPs or parties who have been asking for money for education make such suggestions to you? If they did, how did you assess those suggestions?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Graeme Dey
You chose your words very carefully there—you used phrases such as “I hope to see an improvement”. I take it that you expect progress to be made in the coming year.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Graeme Dey
I have one final question, in the interest of getting a fully balanced picture. In the context of the ambition to recruit another 500 classroom assistants, what progress has been made? For example, we have a growing trend in the identification of pupils with additional support needs. Very often, that is down to improved identification, which is to be welcomed, but classroom assistants can, among other things, provide support in mainstream settings. What progress is there to report in that regard?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Graeme Dey
I do not expect you to have all the figures to hand today, but it would be useful for the committee to hear what the progress on classroom assistants has amounted to. I am certainly also interested in hearing about how you monitor how the £15 million is used and what progress there has been with that. Perhaps you could write to the committee.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Graeme Dey
Good morning. There is a sum of £145.5 million in the budget to support local authorities with the recruitment and deployment of additional staff. Last year, local authorities received the same sum with a view to recruiting an additional 2,500 teachers—which, among other things, would support post-probationers into employment—and 500 classroom assistants. I am not sure about the progress that has been made in relation to the recruitment of classroom assistants. Perhaps you can share that with us. However, the overall number of full-time equivalent teachers being employed fell, due to a significant drop in primary schools.
Given that you presumably had a deal with local authorities on that recruitment, how can that be? How will you seek to ensure that councils fulfil their end of the agreement? I recognise that it ought to be the councils that we put on the spot about this issue. However, as you are here today, cabinet secretary, can you outline for me, first, your view on the lack of progress on boosting teacher numbers and, secondly, what will be done to ensure that we get the additionality that the funding is being provided for?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Graeme Dey
I will be as brief as I can be. At the start of the meeting, cabinet secretary, you set the committee members a challenge: if we suggested to you that you should spend more money on any aspect of education, we needed to tell you where it would come from. My colleague Mr Kerr was unable or unwilling to rise to that challenge when he talked about colleges.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Redress Scheme
Meeting date: 12 January 2023
Graeme Dey
Thank you. Good morning, Deputy First Minister. The redress issue has always been surrounded with great sensitivity. With a process such as this, there can be a disconnect between people’s expectations about how efficiently a scheme will work and what is reasonable to expect in the initial phase. Can you give us a broad sense of how you feel the scheme has performed up to now, recognising that it is still to be built upon and developed?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Graeme Dey
There is, absolutely, a logic to that, but what I would like to hear today is whether the Government is willing—at least in principle—to commit to taking a slightly different approach that affords this committee, or others, greater opportunity to scrutinise what is being proposed. What I am talking about goes beyond the affirmative and super-affirmative procedures. Is the Government willing—in principle at least—to commit to allowing committees to take evidence and produce reports, almost as they would do during stage 1 proceedings, and then treat the process of dealing with the secondary legislation more like a stage 2 process? That might give some colleagues a little more reassurance about having an opportunity to interrogate the proposal further, if you decide to take it forward.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 November 2022
Graeme Dey
We have the legislative angle to this, but we also have the practical application, which is about establishing pathways between a national children’s care service and its interaction with existing localised services not captured by the bill. If we proceed with the intended national care service for adults and then decide not to proceed with the same service for children, we will need to establish new pathways to ensure that everything works. What work is going on in that area?
