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 2406 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Who is that directed to?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Greg, thankfully, my appearance has never put off James Dornan from saying what he wants to say, and long may that continue.
To end our session, Stephanie Callaghan has a very quick supplementary question about the important issue of the roll-out of counsellors for schools.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Yes, and I can see you now, too. Did you catch the drift of my question?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Bob Doris has made a couple of interventions on subjects that he wanted to cover. Bob, is there anything further that you wish to cover?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Are there no set trigger dates for those decisions, Douglas Hutchison? The timeline towards the exams is clear and is known. Are there are no set dates by which decisions have to be made? Are there no D-days?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
The politicians do not understand the language either, Margaret, so the parents and the politicians are good travel companions in this exercise. You and Douglas Hutchison are saying that decisions need to made pretty quickly, for the reasons that Willie Rennie described.
I will now turn to Ross Greer.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
A short response, please, Douglas.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
I would like to hear what Greg Dempster has to say about what you have just said about the response to the contract situation, which is, in itself, a stress that teachers probably do not need now, of all times, and the issue of the mental health and general wellbeing of Scotland’s teachers.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Have you been personally involved in any discussions with the Scottish Government about reducing the number of temporary teacher contracts? Last summer, one in eight of our teachers was on a temporary contract. Have you or any of your members been involved in discussions with the Scottish Government about reducing that number?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
As I said, the level of temporary contracts in Scotland last summer was one in eight, which is pretty much double what it was a decade before.
