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
For reasons of transparency, if it was possible to disentangle any of that in order to understand what the different drivers of inflationary costs were and what was happening to the overall capital settlement, that would be useful. Presumably, it would be useful for local authorities in order to help them to prosecute their arguments for, perhaps, additional funding.
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
That is really helpful. Other committee members have questions about financing arrangements and staffing levels, so we will come to those. I now turn now to Craig Hoy.
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. We can see that there are staged approaches to the roll-out—by age, for example. It will be interesting to see where that gets to.
We have another question that we want to ask you by way of introduction. You indicate in the report that, roughly speaking, expenditure in the year that you looked at was £1 billion of public money. What is the projected funding figure for future years?
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
Reflecting on some of your earlier reports, there were concerns about the extent to which the expansion would be fulfilled, because of delays in the provision of new buildings and refurbishment of buildings, and concerns about whether the increased staffing that would be required to deliver the expansion would be met. Therefore, when I read this report, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that that appears to have happened. We talk about the £1 billion of funding, but is that revenue funding? Does it include the capital investment that has been required to increase capacity in the public sector, for example? Can you break down those different components for us?
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
Who produced the report on the pilots? Was it produced by the local authorities or by somebody on behalf of the Scottish Government?
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
Was there quite a wide variance between those different groups of households? One of the stated and agreed public policy objectives of the expansion of early learning and childcare is about increasing levels of economic activity, is it not? If it is not serving the needs of parents and carers who are at work or want to go to work, that is a public policy issue that needs to be addressed, is it not?
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
Has there been any response yet? Do we know what actions the Scottish Government will take in light of the report on the 10 pilots?
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. Thank you very much. I turn to the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, who has a series of questions to put to you.
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
That is a very clear answer, which is very helpful. Thank you
Willie Coffey has some more questions to put to you.
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 have spoken a little bit already about flexibility and outcomes. One of the expected outcomes that there has, I think, been some measurement of was that the increased provision for pre-school education might lead to parents and carers taking a decision to defer their children going into primary school. On the evidence that you have produced in the report, that does not appear to have happened to the extent that people may have expected. Will you say a little more about that? Do you have any understanding of why that is? Is it a cultural thing? Are there other factors at play that mean that we have not seen the choice, which is there, being made to defer children’s going into primary school?
