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 [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Oliver Mundell
You will have seen Fiona Robertson’s appearance at the committee last week. As a member of this Parliament, do you think that it is acceptable that she omitted to mention those issues when being questioned directly about how the SQA achieves equality?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Oliver Mundell
The SQA might not be responsible for that but, clearly, over the past two years there has been chaos. The OECD has identified that the organisation is not fit for purpose. We now know that there have been discriminatory practices. You and the First Minister have both given Parliament your reassurance that the SQA had your full backing. Do you regret that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Oliver Mundell
I hear what the cabinet secretary says, but I do not understand how it is possible for her to retain confidence in an organisation that has been responsible for a catalogue of errors and has shown such poor judgment. Is it not time, cabinet secretary, to step in and assume day-to-day responsibility for decision making at the SQA, so that young people can have absolute assurance that their interests will be protected? The Scottish Conservatives would support any measures that would be needed to make that possible, given that the organisation is likely to remain in place not just this academic year but the next.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Session 6 Priorities
Meeting date: 6 October 2021
Oliver Mundell
Cabinet secretary, when were you first made aware that there had been breaches of the SQA’s public sector equality duty?
10:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
I listened carefully to your first answer to Willie Rennie, in which you said that the past few years cannot be compared with any others but that you expect some change in grade outcomes. Therefore, if we go back to the old system for this year, do you expect grades and passes to fall?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
—there was the number of A grades that you would want to see in any qualifications system in order to get that differentiation.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
You said nothing publicly and you did not raise any concerns, despite the concerns that were being voiced in the Parliament. Were you happy to let the report from the Government’s other main education agency sit there in the public domain and give the impression to young people that data from their school might be used to identify and address unexpected grades? Were you happy to say nothing about it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
I will return to the convener’s line of questioning but ask the question in a slightly different way. Are the OECD’s recommendations on assessment right? From your professional experience over the years and your experience at the SQA, are the changes that it identifies the ones that the Parliament should follow?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
You said that you have read the Education Scotland report, which I would have expected you to do. What did you do in practice when you read the line:
“Local authority officers expect staff to use these tools to review concordance data, including young people’s prior attainment, and identify and address any unexpected provisional grades.”?
That does not fit with what you are saying today. Did you read that report and think that something was going wrong?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
The report says “Most local authorities” and it specifies that that means that, I think, 70 to 90 per cent of local authorities used three to five years of historical data and that local authority officers expected staff to use that to identify and address unexpected grades. That does not fit with the picture that you have given. As the person responsible for the qualifications that are handed out, did you not have a problem with that at the time?
