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 529 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
People will find that answer strange—particularly people in education, who will expect you to be pulling out all the stops this year after the disruption in the past two years. Measures that have been suggested to me include acquiring additional community spaces to allow greater social distancing should they be required at the time, taking on more invigilators, and putting in place one-to-one catch-up support and tutoring for young people who have missed out on a considerable amount of learning. Surely that seems sensible, and just telling them what the questions will be is not a substitute for what they have missed out on.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
All of that sounds like it is too little too late. There has been a tweet about some parts of the exam process while you hold back other information that parents, teachers and young people are looking for. I think that people will judge that for themselves—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2022-23
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Oliver Mundell
So, the answer is that zero additional resource is going in to support schools in ensuring that exams take place.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Oliver Mundell
Yes, that is starting to answer my question. As someone who represents a constituency in the south of Scotland, I am pleased that you are looking at a specific programme there, but I still have concerns. You used the word “predominantly” when you were talking about the institutions that get support. I look at the Crichton campus in Dumfries and I see the University of the West of Scotland and the University of Glasgow, which are typically more urban based or new institutions. What more support can be provided to them? My particular concern, which is probably broader than just about rural areas, is that, while we continue with a model whereby institutions are funded by fees only to provide courses, it is difficult to see how those outreach campuses can be fully supported and how students who are learning remotely can get the support that they need, particularly off the back of the pandemic, when broader issues around mental health, student support and wider wellbeing have been identified. Anything you can add on that would be helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Oliver Mundell
Is it right to say that you sign off on those places and provide the funding?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Oliver Mundell
You agree that with them, though, as part of the overall package—is that correct?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Oliver Mundell
I will leave it there for now, convener. Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Oliver Mundell
Thank you, convener. I do not want to make a statement, but, in the light of the previous comments, it would be remiss of me not to refer to the fact that, for many people in rural areas, learning online is a positive but there are benefits from learning in person and with other people. I ask that the funding council and others be mindful of that, as it relates to my substantive question, which is about whether the funding council feels that enough support is going to rural education providers under the current model and whether the additional costs of delivering education in rural communities at higher and further education levels is fully reflected.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Skills: Alignment with Business Needs
Meeting date: 15 December 2021
Oliver Mundell
Karen Watt.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People (Impact of Covid)
Meeting date: 1 December 2021
Oliver Mundell
Thank you, convener. I was just waiting to appear on the screen.
My question is about the situation in rural Scotland during the pandemic and whether the various witnesses feel that we got the balance right. Even in my constituency, there seemed to be a real mix. In some of the larger towns and settlements, there was lots of support and contact between young people and their schools, but that was not always the case in more rural and remote communities. Does any witness wish to reflect on that?
