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 2278 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 27 November 2024
Douglas Ross
Given that, why do you still need the grace period? I find it quite strange and, frankly, unbelievable that we are four years in before getting to this point. Your Government published its response to the consultation in June 2019, when the need for a mandatory scheme received overwhelming stakeholder support. You knew from the very beginning—once the consultation had been launched and you had looked at those responses—that that element of it had received overwhelming support. Yet, five years on from that consultation, we are just getting around to putting that into the legislation. That seems to be a very long period of time to have elapsed.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 27 November 2024
Douglas Ross
So, there were no issues at all with the IT system. Is it acceptable and the norm for the Government to take more than four years to set up an IT system? Is that what you are saying?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 27 November 2024
Douglas Ross
You are fine—the microphone comes on automatically.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 27 November 2024
Douglas Ross
However, because the instrument is making something mandatory, my question was whether the Government has any projections of how many people should have gone through the PVG scheme and been registered, but have not done so because it is not a mandatory scheme.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Douglas Ross
I suppose the question that I am asking is: has the number increased?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Douglas Ross
I am referring to the number of pupils that you cannot take for safety reasons.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Douglas Ross
Good. On behalf of the committee, I thank you all for your evidence. Phil Thompson said at the start that we have not heard many voices of young people so far. I think that you have been able to articulate those voices in your testimonies, whether that is through the words of Nevis or with the accounts of what parents and teachers have said. It has been extremely useful to get that on the record, because we will be able to use it in our considerations. We have, however, had a number of submissions from young people to our call for evidence—in fact, a higher number than we have received for most of the other calls for evidence that we have put out. What you have said today matches what we have already heard from young people, who are very impressed with what they receive when they go to outdoor education centres. Thank you very much for your time and your evidence.
12:09 Meeting continued in private until 12:40.Education, Children and Young People Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Douglas Ross
Towards the end of our earlier evidence session, Tara Lillis talked about the increase in violence in schools and particularly difficult behaviour. Are there students who you refuse to take or currently cannot take because of issues that they have in the classroom? We have spoken about ASN and disabilities, but what about violent pupils?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Douglas Ross
On that point from Matthew Sweeney, if legislating for the provision of residential outdoor education is not the solution, nothing else is coming forward. You are saying that such provision is not the top priority because it might not be the single measure that could improve attainment, but could that money go to anything else that would improve attainment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2024
Douglas Ross
Your member councils may take different approaches to the bill. Different approaches may be taken within councils, too, given that we have geographically large authorities such as Highland Council, for example, where different approaches may be taken in the north of the region and the south of the region.
