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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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. That would be helpful.
We speak about the expansion to 1,140 hours, but they are not mandatory. Do you have any data on, or have you done any work to understand, why parents and carers may exercise the right not to avail themselves of the 1,140 hours?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay. Thank you.
I have one final question before I bring in Willie Coffey. In paragraph 25 of the report, you refer to satisfaction surveys of parents in consideration of the flexibility of the arrangements and so on. If I have read it correctly, there was a much higher satisfaction rate among parents or carers when the children were living in households in which parents were not at work, for example. There also seemed to be a higher satisfaction rate in the more deprived areas. Do you have any rationalisation of that? Could you enlighten us as to why you think those are the results?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes. Of course not all other things will be equal over that time, but it would still be very useful to have those assessments.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Before I ask my next question, I had better remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests.
I want to ask about the living wage and fair work practices. You remind us that an ELC living wage and fair work implementation group has been established. You have also mentioned that there is a paucity of data about the living wage and whether it is enforced. Does that organisation not have in its terms of reference some responsibility for getting that data? It is an implementation group, so I presume that it needs the data in order to understand whether the promises that have been made are being kept.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay. That is helpful. The terminology that we use is “living wage and fair work”. I presume that “fair work” covers things such as the use of zero-hours contracts, the right to trade union membership, trade union recognition and so on. Will that be monitored, and will data on that be collected?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay—thanks. I will move on to something that is an increasing part of our agenda and questioning, which is net zero targets. We have seen significant capital infrastructure investment, primarily in new buildings or in the refurbishment of existing buildings. To what extent were net zero targets set around these infrastructure projects, either by the Scottish Government or by the Scottish Futures Trust?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Exhibit 2 shows a flat cash settlement, does it not? Am I reading that correctly?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
I am reflecting on the report that you referred to, Auditor General, which you brought out earlier this year, where you reminded us that a climate emergency was declared in 2019. Four years down the line, we are in an emergency situation. What urgent action has been taken? Is anything being included in construction specifications around new public infrastructure that recognises the seriousness of the emergency that we are facing?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
We will be keen to hear the results of that investigatory work that you are doing.
I will ask one other question before I bring Sharon Dowey in. Again, it is about something that we have spoken about in other contexts at the committee over the last couple of years, and certainly over the last year or so, and that is inflation, especially in the construction industry. In paragraph 43 of the report, you refer to a concern that councils have expressed that construction inflation is estimated to be around 30 per cent. I suppose the fairly obvious question is: what is being done in terms of the allocation of funds to address that?
