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 856 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
The committee has done a piece of work on the attainment gap. Given the vast sums of money that—rightly—have been directed towards tackling the issue, we must have some measure or indication of progress or otherwise. That is essential. Therefore, I repeat my question: are we talking about next year or the year after? When will we be reasonably able to say, “This is the progress that has been made over a four-year period,” or whatever the period happens to be?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Thank you. That is helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
My question touches on to something that I want to ask about later on.
We are not just talking about the next year or two. We have a cohort of young people on whom there will be an impact from the pandemic; there will be a legacy impact for years to come. It is important that we—I hate to use this phrase—learn the lessons of the past three years. We surely need to do that in order to adapt our approach to assessment so that there is a level playing field for those young people.
You said there that you were feeding into Louise Hayward’s work. What are you feeding in? What are the lessons that we have learned from the past three years? What have we learned that we could be doing better in our approaches to certification and about the impact of the distribution of grades on all young people’s learner journeys? You talked earlier about modification arrangements being in place and alternative evidencing. What can you take away from the past three years that you think should be embedded in the approach?
11:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Will you give us a sneak preview of the evaluation that you are about to publish? [Laughter.]
What have you been told about the approach that was taken?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Bòrd na Gàidhlig
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Graeme Dey
Perhaps I did not pitch my question sufficiently clearly. My question is about your organisation. I recognise that we are talking about a national plan to deliver the language across Scotland, but, for my understanding, what percentage of the individuals who are involved in the bòrd are actually embedded in the traditional communities? I see that you have offices in Stornoway, Inverness and Glasgow. What is the geographic spread of the people who work for the bòrd?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Bòrd na Gàidhlig
Meeting date: 29 June 2022
Graeme Dey
I will shrink them to one question and cut to the chase. My question follows on from Willie Rennie’s line of questioning.
Mairi, you mentioned ferries. You will be aware, no doubt, that one of the many criticisms of the ferry delivery organisation is that none of the directors lives in the islands that they serve. There are also criticisms that some of the staff whose roles are not geographically specific are not based in the islands. How many of the people who are involved in your organisation are embedded either professionally or personally in the traditional Gaelic heartlands?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Graeme Dey
I apologise to the panel for not being present in person.
I want to go back a little and look at the challenges that are faced by student officers and staff in colleges post-regionalisation. With regionalisation, college mergers took place and multiple campuses came under the same umbrella. I want to explore the challenges that that can pose, less from the point of view of the time that the relevant people have to dedicate to each campus and more from the point of view of the different cultures that exist in different colleges or on different campuses, which John O’Hara talked about.
For example, travel issues arise when courses are concentrated in one location, which presents difficulties. I am thinking, in particular, of situations in which there is a mix of urban and rural campuses. I am being parochial in that I represent Angus. I want to tease that out a bit more, if I can. Maybe we should start with Amy Monks.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Graeme Dey
I have one further small supplementary question. Earlier, Nora Senior gave the example of Fife College receiving a higher level of funding than Edinburgh. Is that to do with rurality? What is the basis of it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Graeme Dey
That is very useful. Would it be fair to say that colleges need to tweak their curriculums and that there needs to be a change in culture and attitude in universities?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Graeme Dey
With respect, despite the number of years that you have been working on this collectively, Sir Peter Scott still produced a report that suggests that progress has been “glacial”—I think that he used that word earlier. It has been slow, has it not?
