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 1234 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Willie Rennie
I will finish there, convener.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Willie Rennie
Should we not be moving to scenario 2 already? There has been significant disruption to education caused not only by the staff absences that you have talked about but by pupil absences. A lot of pupils are on study leave and are sitting prelim exams now. If we do not know what the revision support advice will be, how can we prepare pupils for those exams? Should we not be moving to scenario 2 now, so that we can crack on with that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Covid-19 and Schools
Meeting date: 19 January 2022
Willie Rennie
I do not want to put words in your mouth, but that is a pretty clear message. You are smiling, which indicates that we should be moving towards scenario 2 so that we can crack on with that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Willie Rennie
I might have to, because it is clear that the cabinet secretary will not make any efforts to argue for more funding for core school budgets. It is your job to stand up for education, but you are not making that case. Why on earth are you sitting here today complacently accepting the fact that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy is, in effect, cutting £100 million from your core budget? That is undermining the work that you are doing. Why are you not making that case?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Willie Rennie
I am quite surprised by the cabinet secretary’s evidence. I do not think that she has given any acknowledgement to the fact that core school budgets will be cut by £100 million in this year’s settlement. Why is she not spitting mad about that? Surely, it is her responsibility to stand up for school budgets.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Willie Rennie
It is quite simple. The real-terms cut to councils is £268 million. Education is about half of what councils do, so I am being quite cautious in saying that the cut is around £100 million. There is no reference to or acknowledgement of that. Why are you not spitting mad about that? Surely, you should not be defending that cut to the core school budget; you should be arguing for an increase to it.
We heard from Michael Marra, who made some pretty clear points about the challenges—which you acknowledged—that pupils and teachers are facing in schools, yet you have imposed a cut of £100 million to their budget.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Willie Rennie
The figures are from the Scottish Parliament information centre. If you dig into your briefing, I am sure that you will discover that there is a £268 million cut. Councillors across the board, including Scottish National Party councillors, are spitting mad about the local authority settlement, so I cannot understand why you are not, given that education is a massive part of what local authorities do. Why are you not angry?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Willie Rennie
The cabinet secretary has followed the script this morning. Teachers, councillors, pupils and parents will listen to the cabinet secretary’s answers and will draw one conclusion, which is that she is not standing up for Scottish education and making the case for it. There would not be a £100 million cut to core school budgets if she was making the case.
I have finished my questions.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Willie Rennie
There has been a £100 million cut. Do you have no issues with that at all?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Willie Rennie
With respect, your answer was rubbish, because the Scottish Parliament information centre has made it clear that there is a £268 million cut to local authority budgets, and half of local authorities’ spending is on education. You have made various promises to fund extra teachers and other things, and you should, of course, fund those, because those were your election promises, but that does not entitle you to cut £100 million from core school budgets.
This is not about England; it is about Scotland. I do not want to hear comparisons with elsewhere, because I care about pupils in Scotland. Cabinet secretary, why on earth are you not angry about the cut? I am angry. I cannot believe that the Government is cutting budgets at this time, so why are you not angry about it? That is what I do not understand. What you have said is very managerial.
