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 2559 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority: “Higher History Review 2024”
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
I guess that we all have different preferences. That is why I preferred maths and accountancy to history and geography.
The report states that the marking instructions were “intentionally more detailed” this year. Was that because everything is improving year by year or was it specifically felt that they had not been adequate in the past?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority: “Higher History Review 2024”
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
Okay—thank you. The report makes the point that there was difficulty in recruiting markers in some subjects. That might lead me to think that people do not have the required experience or are inconsistent. Would that be a wrong assumption?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise (Staff Recruitment and Retention)
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
To build on that, Mr Smellie said that there should be transformational funding, but I think that we can assume that there will not be. It is a question of what we can do with current funding. I do not know what the budget will contain, but it looks as though the NHS will continue to be the priority, which means that local government will not receive as much funding. Given that situation, how can we work better with the resources that we have? I am particularly thinking about professions other than social workers, which I assume would include teachers, the police, the third sector and youth workers. Do those professions factor into delivering the Promise?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise (Staff Recruitment and Retention)
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
Would it be a question of being more joined up?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise (Staff Recruitment and Retention)
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
Where does the third sector fit in? Obviously, that is outwith councils. Does how the third sector gets involved vary around the country?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise (Staff Recruitment and Retention)
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
That is fine.
I am also on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, where we are always being told that we need to improve productivity in business, the health service and, presumably, social work as well. How could we do that in social work? We mentioned that we could if we had more finance. Let us assume that that will not happen—that we will not have any more, or that it will be 1 per cent or something like that. Could we use social workers better? I am thinking about the bureaucracy in particular. Could we use information technology or artificial intelligence to help people? I was struck by the phrase “purposeful work”—I think that Professor McCulloch used it. I get that we are all frustrated—we, too, must do stuff that we do not like doing—but could we make better use of the resources and the people that we have?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise (Staff Recruitment and Retention)
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
That is very helpful.
Ms Bavidge, it sounds like things are quite joined up at a local level. Does the Scottish Government need to do more with the other professions that are involved with the Promise?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise (Staff Recruitment and Retention)
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
Can that be fixed at a local level?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise (Staff Recruitment and Retention)
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
The independent care review talked about a lack of evidence and data on other non-social work professions. Is there a lack of data on who does what?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise (Staff Recruitment and Retention)
Meeting date: 4 December 2024
John Mason
I will press you on the pattern of thirds. Is that primarily down to whether a student ends up in a big council such as Glasgow or a small one such as Clackmannanshire or the Western Isles, or is it down to the individual person or something else?
