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 3402 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
The reason why I want to get to the bottom of this is that, obviously, the morale of teachers is an important issue for all of us—inspirational teachers are exactly what we need in all our classrooms across Scotland, at all levels of education.
When the announcement was made about the baseline money being made permanent, there seemed to be a suggestion that there was an agreement between the Scottish Government and COSLA that that money would be used to recruit teachers or cement teachers on permanent contracts? Is that right? Was there such an agreement?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
But was it understood by COSLA that the Scottish Government was giving that money to the local authorities for those contracts to be made permanent? Was that implicit in the discussions between the Scottish Government and COSLA?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
I am afraid that the answers will have to be very brief, because we are out of time.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Are there D-days? Are there decision days for those things? Are there trigger moments?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Is Douglas Hutchison right to think that the trigger date for making a decision is the end of January?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Very briefly, Michael—we need to move on.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Again, I appeal for brevity in the questions and answers because of the time limitations that we are living with.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
You talked about the stress that the whole education system is under. I refer to that article in the Glasgow Evening Times. From the point of view of the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland, are you generally satisfied with the supports that are in place for the mental health and general wellbeing of teachers?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Are you saying that we have to look at the root cause?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Stephen Kerr
Has COSLA, or have its members, been asked to provide any kind of report on the way that the money is being used to make teachers’ contracts permanent? Is there a reporting mechanism?
