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 736 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Ruth Maguire
I am keen to hear from Heather Innes on this question. Obviously, you also have a big spread in the Highlands, and you have already talked about the number of leaders that you have had to engage with. I would be interested in hearing your perspective on this matter.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Ruth Maguire
My colleague Graeme Dey will probably want to explore some of that with you, so I will go back to the question that I just asked. In some ways, you have already answered it, because it was about the challenges of being representatives. Given all the good work that is being done by the college itself to bring on representatives who feel able to challenge, have there been times when you have been able to challenge decisions and when you have felt that the work that was done helped you in that respect?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Ruth Maguire
I want to press you for an example of that good practice. It is good to hear exactly what that looks like for a student. Obviously, I acknowledge that students’ needs are diverse, but will you share some examples of good practice with the committee?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Ruth Maguire
On that issue of responsiveness to communities and to business and routes to work, how much influence do staff have on the choice and design of the qualifications that colleges offer? I put that to Stuart Brown.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Ruth Maguire
Good morning to the panel. Obviously, colleges provide important access to education and routes to employment, as you have said. Will you share your reflections on how, post regionalisation, colleges are responding to the needs of learners and the communities that they serve? Stuart Brown spoke a bit about that, so I will come to him first. It would be good to hear about some of the good practice as well as the challenges.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Ruth Maguire
Will you comment on how collaboration with schools can help to hang on to pupils and keep them in education? I am thinking about the combination of academic and vocational studies that can be made available.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Ruth Maguire
Has regionalisation impacted on your reach into schools?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
I, too, found the minister’s letter very helpful. The areas that I wanted to explore have been clarified by the minister, particularly in relation to exactly how additional support needs will be met. I do not have any further questions.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Early Learning and Childcare: 1,140 Hours
Meeting date: 25 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
Good morning, panel. We have already covered a fair bit of what I was going to ask about, but I am interested in childminding. In answer to Michael Marra, Graeme McAlister said that the number of childminders has declined because local authorities are not promoting childminding. You also mentioned recruitment into local authority early years settings.
Looking at the flipside, I wonder whether you can say a bit more about the unique contribution of childminders to provision of childcare. I am interested in hearing from childminders what childminding as a business or role offers people who wish to take it up, as well as what it offers parents and children.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Early Learning and Childcare: 1,140 Hours
Meeting date: 25 May 2022
Ruth Maguire
Will you say a bit about how the Scottish Government is working with the Scottish Childminding Association to try to ease that administrative burden, and about the business support that is needed, which you mentioned? Do local authorities provide additional support to childminders to become partner providers, given that childminding is a different set-up and, as you say, it often involves sole workers?
