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 935 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Willie Rennie
Okay. Let us say that you have clear evidence that a council has ignored your warnings and has cut teacher numbers. If you withdraw the funding, what does the council do next? For example, what happens if the council decides that, as a result of that cut in funding, it has to make further cuts in teacher numbers? Will you impose a further penalty on that council? How does that work?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Willie Rennie
If you penalise councils that believe that they have no other choice than to cut teacher numbers, is it possible that there could be even fewer teachers at the end of that process? Is that a possible scenario?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Willie Rennie
There is no point in having the threat of a penalty if you are not prepared to contemplate the consequences of that penalty. You have to accept that we could end up with a scenario in which councils have even less funding and, therefore, cannot employ as many teachers as they would like, so there will be a further cut in teacher numbers. You have to accept that that is a possibility with the penalty.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 February 2023
Willie Rennie
One advantage of making legislation in the way that we are doing in this case is that, irrespective of the content of the bill, it puts a focus on the issues.
I was fortunate to meet representatives of The Usual Place in Dumfries, who attended an event that I was at last week. They provide confident leadership in disability. I am also familiar with Zest cafe in St Andrews. Lisa, who runs that organisation, has no time at all for employers who say that they cannot get enough people to work for their organisations. She employs people with learning difficulties and people from a variety of backgrounds and with different disabilities. She thinks that employers—not all of them, but quite a lot of them—are not educating themselves enough to understand the talent that is available among that cohort. What more can we do to educate employers on the assets that they are missing out on?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 February 2023
Willie Rennie
Whatever the merits or demerits of the bill, it has brought a focus on the issues, which is in itself helpful. I am struck by my encounters with constituents and organisations. I meet parents who are experts at championing their children’s rights, which they often do until quite late in life. They are brilliant at it, and they are ferocious. We need to draw more on their talents.
I am also struck by employers and organisations that I meet that are frustrated because other employers do not understand the full potential of this untapped resource. Rather than look at people as a burden, we can look at them as an opportunity for employers.
There is also an opportunity for the young people and for older people. Many of the people we are talking about live until quite old age, so we need to consider their lifelong opportunities. Do employers fully understand their potential? If not, what can we do to persuade them to understand it? That is for whoever would like to contribute. I will let you pick.
12:15Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
It seems that you do not understand why the rate has fallen. Why has the percentage gone down?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
I will stop there, but I am really concerned that you do not know why that has happened. We really performed well—it was the golden nugget—and now the amount of funding is dropping. You have not given an explanation as to why, and I do not think that we are going to get one.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
We are a third of the way through this session of the Parliament and seven years on from when the First Minister made a commitment to prioritise education. However, I would argue that the improvement has been marginal at best. I do not really want to trade stats, because we could be here all day if we did that, so let me be fair—I am always fair. The ACEL figures show that, in the past five years, the literacy attainment gap has been cut at primary level but we are seeing only a 1 per cent improvement, whereas, at level 3 in secondary, the gap has grown by almost 3 per cent. Are you satisfied with that situation?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
Okay. My next question focuses on the pace of reform. The Parliament voted in 2017 or so to get rid of the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Education Scotland, and we will get the replacements in 2024, seven years later. Following the Stobart review and the OECD review of the transition from the broad general education to the senior phase and the two-term dash, we will get Louise Hayward’s report in May. I really want to know whether that will be a worked-up plan. Will it be ready to implement within this parliamentary session? How long will it take?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
My question is about universities. What planning have you done in the event that China invades Taiwan, resulting in a reduction in the number of Chinese students coming to Scottish universities?
