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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 2843 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
Do any of the other panel members what to contribute to that? You are okay—fine. I was just checking.
I am interested in finding out what the panel think of, and whether they agree with, the OECD’s comment that the “role of knowledge” in CFE requires a bit more clarification. If so, in what way? How could the understanding of the role of knowledge be consistently understood when developing a curriculum at the local level?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
I will bring in Professor Humes on that question, because he is sitting straight ahead of me.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
Willie Rennie and Ross Greer want in on this topic. It has obviously piqued our attention.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
Walter Humes and Gordon Stobart want to come in on this.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
Exactly. Stephanie Callaghan, do you have any more questions?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
Sorry—I asked for something a bit more succinct.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
That is a wonderful segue to the line of questioning that Michelle Thomson will pursue.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
Gordon Stobart has indicated that he wants to come in on that, as has Janet Brown.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education Reform
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Sue Webber
Thank you very much. That is a great place to finish the morning—it is still the morning. I thank the witnesses for their time and contributions and for accepting our request for a little bit of an extension to their time here. That concludes the public part of our proceedings today.
11:48 Meeting continued in private until 12:23.Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Drug Deaths and Drug Harm
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Sue Webber
It is not a hidden fact that our party’s perspective on safer drug consumption facilities is different from that of others. We are very much looking forward to seeing the evidence before we take a position on consumption facilities being set up more widely across the country.
I am aware that the City of Edinburgh Council is considering such things, and I am also aware that the service in Glasgow is funded by the Scottish Government. Given that the integration joint board in Edinburgh is in critical financial strife, I would have grave concerns if any consumption facility were to be funded from its existing budget. I am therefore looking for a bit of assurance on that.
Recently, the minister and I have shared some correspondence on the priorities that I think that some of the IJBs and alcohol and drug partnerships need to have with regard to the medication assisted treatment standards. I would just highlight the case of a constituent from my area, who was on Buvidal in Edinburgh prison, and when he presented at the south-west office in Edinburgh, he was told that he could not have that and that he would have to come back in two weeks, which potentially meant that he would have to go back on to methadone. There is a mismatch here between harm reduction and the embedding of that approach and the investment that is needed at local level to really help our individuals. I do not want the cart to be put before the horse here; I want us to have services that help people to recover before we have services that prevent harm.
