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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 825 contributions
|
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
The First Minister is right that contingencies are needed—but not the type that her Government proposes. She should be guaranteeing that exams will take place this year. Does she reflect negatively on the confirmation from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills yesterday at the Education, Children and Young People Committee that no additional resources are being put in place to allow that to happen safely?
What has happened to suggestions about acquiring larger community spaces? What about putting additional invigilators in place? What about one-to-one support, most importantly for young people who have lost out on their learning?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
Cabinet secretary, in response to Fergus Ewing’s question on rural funding, you mentioned the change to using the data on low-income families as a measure for the attainment funding. Will consideration be given to extending that approach to pupil equity funding? I have raised the issue before, but I am concerned that a small number of schools—predominantly smaller rural schools—do not get any pupil equity funding.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
To be frank, I find that answer very disappointing, because it is well established that there is often stigma attached to being poor in rural communities, where that poverty is often much more visible. Various poverty campaigners recognise that. I am sad to hear you say that free school meal uptake is the same in rural areas, because many people do not think that that is the case.
How much additional money has been allocated in the budget to guarantee that this year’s examinations will take place?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
People will find that answer strange—particularly people in education, who will expect you to be pulling out all the stops this year after the disruption in the past two years. Measures that have been suggested to me include acquiring additional community spaces to allow greater social distancing should they be required at the time, taking on more invigilators, and putting in place one-to-one catch-up support and tutoring for young people who have missed out on a considerable amount of learning. Surely that seems sensible, and just telling them what the questions will be is not a substitute for what they have missed out on.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
All of that sounds like it is too little too late. There has been a tweet about some parts of the exam process while you hold back other information that parents, teachers and young people are looking for. I think that people will judge that for themselves—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
So, the answer is that zero additional resource is going in to support schools in ensuring that exams take place.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
You have literally just told us that you are looking at additional support for pupils to help them to catch up on lost learning but that you will not tell us the detail of that right now. Education is a joint endeavour between local councils and the Scottish Government, and those discussions should not be taking place behind closed doors. You should be providing that information to parents, pupils and teachers now so that they can set aside time, possibly in their Easter break, to make the most of that provision.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
I do not want to be rude, but I think that you need to get real. Young people, parents and teachers are anxious now. They are expressing concern because they feel that they have missed out on education and that clear messaging is not coming from the Government about what will happen with exams. You said that there are plans in the background for additional catch-up, but we do not know anything about them or what they would involve in detail.
From your answer, it seems that zero additional pounds are going in to facilitate exams taking place and the putting in place of sensible precautions. It just seems like a repeat of what we have seen over the past two years, whereby exams and education have not really been a priority.
I have a final question. What additional resource and support are going in to help teachers to take part in the education reform process? They have been pulling out all the stops to keep our young people in classrooms and they are doing the very best that they can do in difficult circumstances. What additional resource are you putting in place to free them up to meaningfully participate in that process?
Meeting of the Parliament (Virtual)
Covid-19
Meeting date: 5 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
Last year, we saw educational attainment figures that, even in the context of the pandemic, made a mockery of Nicola Sturgeon’s promise that education would be her top priority. We simply cannot afford any more unavoidable disruption to learning.
How many additional non-classroom-committed teachers can be called on to cover lessons? What additional resources are being made available to keep our schools open? Can the First Minister confirm that every pupil in Scotland now has access to an electronic device to support remote learning in the event that they are required to self-isolate?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Dumfries City Status
Meeting date: 22 December 2021
Oliver Mundell
Emma Harper has listed lots of wonderful people from Dumfriesshire, but none of them needed city status to succeed. What is it about Dumfries being a city that she feels is so important and so lacking at the moment?
