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 2200 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
[Inaudible.]—the ones that you are not in as opposed to the ones that you are in. You will know what the balance looks like.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
Maureen, when you described the support that you give to families, you talked very optimistically about some of the successes that you have had. Will you describe what support you give to parents and families in practical terms?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
What is it? Did you call it an achievement club?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
I apologise. Sara Spencer is the cost of the school day project manager at the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, and she is joining us remotely. Louise Goodlad is senior head of partnerships, Scotland, at the Prince’s Trust Scotland. You are all very welcome.
Given the fact that we are considering the work of the third sector in relation to the Scottish attainment challenge, I will start with Maureen McAteer. Is the work that Barnardo’s does in relation to the attainment challenge additional to what was going on before? What is the value of the third sector’s involvement in this?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
That is a very powerful point.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
Are there measurable outcomes that you can share with the committee in relation to the pupils with whom you engage?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
There is a real risk that the tendering process will go the same way as commercial tendering has gone with local authorities and other public bodies, in that it has become harder and harder for small businesses to get a fair share of what is available in the public sector. The same could be true for the third sector, so we should take note of that—in particular, in relation to the attainment challenge.
I turn to Stephanie Callaghan.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
I appreciate those answers. We now turn to Natalie Don, who will be followed by Willie Rennie. It looks as though he will be the final member of the committee to ask questions, because Oliver Mundell has not returned from his break from the meeting.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
Is that a member of staff?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 23 February 2022
Stephen Kerr
Good morning, and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2022 of the Education, Children and Young People Committee.
We have received apologies from James Dornan. I am delighted to welcome Natalie Don MSP, who joins us as a substitute member for the first time today. You are very welcome, Natalie. I thank you for being here and invite you to declare any interests that are relevant to the remit of the committee.
