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 893 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: 22 February 2023
Graeme Dey
Thank you. That is very reassuring.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Graeme Dey
Good morning, cabinet secretary. I go back to what has triggered all this—namely, how an additional sum of £145.5 million that was given for the purpose of increasing teacher and learning support assistant numbers was used, or not, by local authorities. A lot of muddying of the water has been attempted around that, and two points are being lost. One is that we should acknowledge that eight councils, and the grant-aided sector, used the money for the purpose for which it was given and have increased their numbers, but it is clear that the majority of councils have not done so.
I want to explore with you what the Government has ascertained with regard to how the moneys were used at local authority level. I have knowledge of one council—Angus Council—where the sums that were given were deployed to add 28 full-time equivalent teachers and 10 learning support assistants. However, Angus Council’s numbers have gone down by 27 overall, which gives the impression that it has clearly not replaced temporary and permanent posts that already existed. There has also been an admission that £1 million of that money was allocated—the council tells me that a strategic proposal was made—to meet the costs of a saving that the council was making, so the money was obviously not used for the purpose for which it was given. I apologise for the long-winded intro, but has the Government found that to be typical—is that what most councils utilised the moneys for?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Graeme Dey
Yes, I appreciate that, cabinet secretary, but the situation appears to be pretty clear when you look through the list of numbers for each council. The vast majority of councils saw their teacher numbers go down, so, in the majority of cases, the money clearly was not used for the purpose for which it was given.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Graeme Dey
Are the passports all living documents that the young person, parents and carers can input to as time goes on? To what extent would you be prepared to require bodies to take account of the content? It is all very well and good having the passport, but if the relevant body does not act on it, it does not really serve a purpose.
I am trying to get into the nitty-gritty of the issue, because there is a lot of potential. It is good to hear that there are multiple options, but the passport needs to be something that the relevant people are feeding into, and the requirements that it contains need to be implemented.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Graeme Dey
Sorry—what is the embargo?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Graeme Dey
Thank you. That is useful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Graeme Dey
Good morning, panel. I go back to something that Fiona Whelan touched on. Universities Scotland, in its written evidence, highlighted a specific issue for students in the pre-arrival period, particularly when they have a conditional offer and it is therefore relatively late in the day before they know, and the university knows, that they are coming. It suggested that there are issues around timing. A returning student’s needs may already be known, so they are almost ahead of the queue in trying to get the resource that they need, but that may be frustrating for new students. How significant a problem is that for universities?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Graeme Dey
We are all deeply grateful for your evidence this morning, which has been very thought provoking. If you will indulge me, I want to take the conversation off on a slight tangent. Today, understandably, we have been talking about the bill and what it sets out to do. Let us imagine that we invited you in not to talk about a bill; let us imagine that the bill did not exist and that we were simply asking you what one, two or three things we could do to change the existing practice and approach that would make a substantial difference to the experience of young people in the context of what you do or in the wider context. If we were not looking at a bill, what could we do to fundamentally change and improve a situation that clearly needs to be improved?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Graeme Dey
I have three questions, but the good news is that they are mostly focused on universities and colleges, so you will not all have to answer. The first one concerns the independent living fund and the disabled students allowance. Fiona Whelan touched on the latter earlier. I am interested in exploring the extent to which those interact with the experience of the students and the support that is provided, and how effective they are in delivering what the students need to support them as they go through college and university.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Graeme Dey
To support that would require perhaps one piece of documentation that explains all someone’s needs and requirements and that is just picked up and run with.
