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 1285 contributions
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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
I have one final question, which is about research. Scotland used to punch well above its weight in that area, and we still do, but not as much as we used to. We used to get 15 per cent of the UK research councils’ funding each year, but that amount has now dropped to 12.5 per cent. Why has that happened?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
The minister cannot be happy that we pay workers two different pay rates for doing exactly the same job. Workers who happen to be in the unfortunate position of working in a private sector nursery are paid much less than those in council nurseries. That cannot be right, can it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
What does “substantially eliminate” mean?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
I am just trying to get a definition of what “substantially eliminate” means. We all thought before that you were going to abolish the gap completely, but now we understand that the position has been refined. We could argue about how that developed, but I am still unclear about how we know whether the gap has been substantially eliminated. Is there a number? Are you expecting the gap to reach a certain level, which you would call “substantially eliminating” it? If so, what is it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
It is important, however. The attainment gap is massive—enormous—and we were slipping down the international rankings. That is why the OECD report was commissioned, so there was a crisis, and I have to say that the way in which the cabinet secretary presented it sounded incredibly complacent.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
No—the question is about the performance of Scottish universities. What is your analysis of why the amount of funding has gone from 15 per cent of the UK research councils’ funding to 12 per cent?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
No, no—what is your understanding of the reason for that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
My questions are on the same subject. I recognise all the figures about pay rates and the real living wage, but the differential is causing the challenge. We have all heard anecdotal evidence from private and voluntary sector nurseries that they are losing staff to council nurseries and to other sectors, because staff can get better jobs with better pay elsewhere. That is reducing capacity and having an impact on the flexibility and choice that were supposed to be available through the provision of 1,140 hours.
The minister is right about the fact that private nurseries have other sources of income, but those sources are shrinking, because the state contribution to their work is increasing. The impact that the cross-subsidy has is reducing.
I am alarmed at the thought that the private sector’s capacity will reduce massively because we have two tiers built into the pay system—that has been the design from the beginning. The situation cannot be turned around overnight, because the sum of money is significant, but is there a plan to bring pay rates in the PVI sector into line with those in council nurseries, so that people are not paid different wages for doing exactly the same job?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
There is a difference, though, between sustainable rates and fair rates. Surely, it is just not fair that people get paid much less for doing the exactly the same job. You cannot accept that that is a satisfactory position.
