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 1071 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
I do not think that I could compel colleges to do that.
My own view, and that of the Scottish Government, is that there should not be any compulsory redundancies. To that end, Mr Dey has been engaging closely with the SFC on the issue, on promoting fair work principles and on adhering to our commitment to apply grant conditionality, which was set out in the Bute house agreement. In our engagement with the SFC and with the college sector directly we have been clear about our expectations on redundancies.
I recognise that a number of challenges exist here but, as far as I am aware, I cannot unpick the ONS reclassification, which predates my time in office by nearly 10 years.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
I might bring in Stephen Pathirana on that. I am not sure that the flexibilities would be ring fenced for that specific purpose.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
The current economic environment is very challenging, as I intimated in my earlier responses to Mr Kerr and Ms Thomson. It is fair to say that the flat-cash settlement for 2023-24 has posed a number of challenges to institutions, and I will continue to work with the SFC and the sector to support the strategic change that we need.
I might bring in Stephen Pathirana to talk about the progress that has been made with the SFC. However, if it would be helpful to the committee, in advance of conversations and evidence sessions on the budget, I would be more than happy to provide written evidence in that respect as a supplement to some of the evidence that you might receive.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
I do not have the details in front of me.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
I think that that relates to the local government pay deal as opposed to the teachers’ pay deal.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
Yes. Pam Duncan-Glancy has raised a really important point. Obviously, negotiations are on-going and I am not involved in them, but I am very clear that there must not be detriment to schools, which the member alluded to in relation to those negotiations. The funding was promised on a four-year cycle. It must come to schools and directly to headteachers, who have the power to make a difference in their school setting.
In relation to my responsibilities as Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, I reassure Pam Duncan-Glancy that longer-term planning in relation to the funding is vital, and it is why PEF is making a difference right now in our schools. There not being detriment to the levels of funding that are available at school level is absolutely imperative, in my view.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
Including in this financial year? Absolutely.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
If Mr Greer would like to write to Mr Dey—I am now issuing him homework—or to me directly, I will ensure that we get him a response on that issue. I would be keen to hear a bit more about the detail of that specific instance and about the picture nationally and how that is playing out, as I recognise the concerns.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
We can selectively choose a year that we want to, I suppose; that would be the answer to Ms Duncan-Glancy’s question. My closest measure here is 2019, but even 2019 and the three years prior to that do not compare to 2023, because our young people have lived through a pandemic. I am not sure that I would accept the suggestion that their outcomes in relation to their academic attainment should be measured bluntly against that.
More generally, we need to be very careful in how we frame some of this, because our young people lived through a pandemic and were out of school for such a long time. We have just heard about issues with attendance. Some young people are not engaging. For many of them, getting them to engage in formal education will be very challenging.
I know that we will come on to talk about behaviour, but I see that as part of the wider challenge in relation to attainment. Do I think that we need to keep going in relation to closing the gap? Absolutely, but we also need to be mindful of that shift in the context. It is not just about Covid; it is also about the cost of living crisis and things getting much harder for families than they were previously—in the three years that Ms Duncan-Glancy spoke about, for example. Inflationary pressures were not where they are now at that time, and it is really important that we all take cognisance of that in relation to the targets that we have set.
We absolutely need to close the poverty-related attainment gap, but we need to be mindful of the new normal that the pandemic has created and that the economic conditions have necessitated in recent years. That is having an impact on our young people before they even enter the school gates, never mind when they are sitting their exams.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Jenny Gilruth
I state that headteachers must not have that uncertainty: they must know that the funding will flow in those four-year cycles. As far as I am concerned, in relation to my responsibilities, headteachers should and must have that certainty. The premise behind attaching pupil equity funding to four-yearly funding cycles was about giving certainty—giving headteachers the opportunity to plan and recruit on a non-temporary basis, for example. Any movement away from that would be to the detriment of our young people.
