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 1561 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ross Greer
I have a question about encouraging that local accountability. It is not for the Scottish Government to tell local elected members what they should have on their agenda, but how do you strike the right balance between giving local authorities the autonomy that they deserve as elected bodies and trying to encourage and support them to do local evaluation work that can collectively be fed up to build the national picture?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ross Greer
I am interested in the potential for a longitudinal study of the impact of the funding so far. I think that it was Jim Thewliss from School Leaders Scotland who first made the point to us that we are at a stage where entire cohorts have gone through the whole of primary or secondary education while the funds have been in place, and that this is an appropriate time to commission a long-term, longitudinal evaluation of the overall impact that the funding has had in specific settings? Is any work under way or likely to take place over the coming months that will fit that description?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ross Greer
If you do not mind, I will start with a daft question, because I am certainly not a lawyer. What do you recommend? Is it that the High Court should be able to make orders only for a maximum of 22 days and then a couple of subsequent—potentially, three months—extensions? That is not directly relevant to the regulations, though, is it? That is either for the proposed bill or more directly for the UK Government and UK-wide legislation.
11:15Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Ross Greer
I recognise that there are ways in which the regulations can be strengthened. However, particularly on restricting the High Court’s ability in terms of the length of orders, it seems to me to be questionable whether we would be able to do that through regulation in Scotland. I assume that any English authority that was seeking to challenge that would at least have a pretty strong case, given that the matter is not in primary legislation in Scotland and is not relevant to the UK-wide legislation—the English legislation, specifically—that applies.
You mentioned a couple of other concerns that I am interested in getting into in a little bit more detail. One of them—it seems to be very reasonable—is that under the regulations the Care Inspectorate will not be obliged to inspect facilities. There is an obligation to notify the inspectorate, but it is not obliged to take any particular action. Given that the regulations are a temporary solution, would you be satisfied if the Care Inspectorate simply made a commitment to inspect, although it would not be required to by regulations, given that what we are talking about will—we hope—be in place for two years? If the Care Inspectorate simply made a commitment to inspect facilities, would that address that specific concern?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Ross Greer
I have a final, brief question. You mentioned in your written submission that the use of the national outcomes in parliamentary scrutiny in Scotland was an example of good practice. I will be honest—most, if not all, of us did not think that we were doing a good job in that regard. Could you tell us what we were doing right, because we were not aware of that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Ross Greer
Thank you—that was quite reassuring.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Ross Greer
The group of individuals that Daniel Johnson and I met last week in Govan began to coalesce around the word “implicit” when we asked them about the alignment between their organisations’ strategic plans and the NPF. I will start with a relatively general question to Jennifer Wallace: is it fair to say that, at the moment, the NPF operates more like a set of general principles that shape public sector culture in Scotland than a specific set of measurable outcomes?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Ross Greer
When leadership was there previously, where was it coming from? Did it come from the permanent secretary or from directors general?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Ross Greer
I will stick with the question of leadership and ownership. In his submission, Max French made an interesting comparison between the Scottish model of appointing champions in the civil service for various outcomes, and the approach in Northern Ireland, where there were more-defined owners. However, he noted that there were significant levels of internal opposition in the public sector in Northern Ireland. Are those two things related?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Ross Greer
Has the model in Northern Ireland of appointing owners, rather than champions, so that there is very direct accountability, contributed to the internal opposition, or are those unrelated issues?
