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 1189 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
Sorry, it is in your table in paper FPA/S6/22/9/1. It is under your figures for education and skills. You have figures for central Government grants to local authorities, higher education, student support, Scottish Funding Council, learning and so on. That figure is against student support, which is all tied up in that support, so I wondered what that was.
If the convener agrees, I am happy for somebody to write to me about that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
That would be helpful. In one of the briefings that Professors Gerry McCormac and Sally Mapstone from Universities Scotland presented not long ago, they were very concerned about getting over this Covid period and providing extra student support to help with that, so I am interested to know what that figure is for.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
I will stay on the same theme, Professor Heald. It is an interesting debate whether, from a philosophical angle, devolved and reserved matters should remain separate or whether there is an economic case to have a slight blurring to boost expenditure. In paragraph 10 of your submission, you say that such a blurring can affect transparency because it is not so easy to see where the money is being spent and, more importantly, how well it is being used. You mention “blame shifting” or “credit claiming” and say that it becomes too much of a political matter. Is there a philosophical argument for keeping reserved and devolved matters entirely separate?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
I would echo the comments of the convener, that it is extremely helpful to have this additional information that we have not had on previous occasions. I also thank you, minister, for the letter that you sent me on 16 November 2021, when I asked various questions regarding the autumn budget revisions, particularly on the education front.
I will stay on the education theme for a minute. One of my colleagues wants to ask you about this in a bit more depth, too. Could you interrogate the figure for student loans? It seems to be pretty high.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
Are those Covid-related changes? Obviously, there may be more students who are—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
That is correct, so can we take this a little bit further? In a Covid scenario, when we obviously want to increase the amount of money that is available to Scotland in order to get ourselves back on our feet—there has been additional money, which has been drawn from reserves—is it your view that the process of applying that spending has great difficulties if it is at the behest of the UK Government acting on behalf of Scotland rather than being held and disbursed by the Scottish Government?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
And of this committee.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
It would be helpful to the committee if we could get a little detail. As you say, it is obviously very technical. I am sure that Michelle Thomson wants to come in on that.
I have another couple of questions, Michelle, so if you want to come in on that bit—it is up to the convener.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
Mr Mackay is quite right—the matter is exceptionally technical. I am interested in the prediction that it will be more difficult in the years ahead to draw back as much money on student loans, because more people have gone through great difficulties after Covid. Is that really what you are saying?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Liz Smith
I understand that, but that aspect is very important because it has an effect on the numbers of students. We are trying to widen access, which we have made good progress on, so it has a big implication for future spending.
Minister, I want to ask you about your helpful table towards the end of your brief about the differences between the Covid and non-Covid spend on education. We had Alastair Sim at committee last week, who made the point that he is concerned that higher education is not sufficiently high up the Scottish Government’s list of priorities when it comes to future spend. The figure for higher education student support in that table is £15 million. I have asked about that before, but I ask again: specifically, what is that figure for?
