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 2559 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
Can I make a point of order, convener?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
As I understand it, the SCQF Partnership is not part of the public body landscape as it is a separate charity. Does that make a difference to legislation concerning it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
I do not speak for the Government. [Laughter.]
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
Pam Duncan-Glancy referred to various recommendations, including by the OECD, but one of the OECD’s comments was that there is already a cluttered landscape. She probably knows exactly what I will say, but I will say it anyway: there is a huge number of public bodies in Scotland compared with other places. We are a relatively small country and we should be able to do things more simply. Every time we create another body, it inevitably takes resources away from the front line. Does she not accept that the last thing that we need in this space—as in other spaces—is yet another public body?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
I accept that amendment 290 is not Miles Briggs’s amendment, but does the fact that Education Scotland is, in effect, part of the Scottish Government not make a bit of a difference here, because the Government is responsible for everything, is it not?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
Surely the argument that something has been done for 150 years is hardly an argument when we are trying to revamp the Scottish education system to keep it going. Would the cabinet secretary not accept, based on what Mr Greer has said, that the process is not independent? The Crown is only doing things that the ministers recommend.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
It strikes me that, listening to Willie Rennie’s intervention—I obviously cannot intervene on him at the moment—part of the answer to that is surely related to the fact that the inspector could come before the education committee. Through the committee’s questioning, challenging and whatever, the inspector would have the opportunity to demonstrate their independence just by their attitude at the committee.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
I take the member’s point that we would like to think that committees are listened to outside these four walls. However, would putting that requirement in the bill—we have oodles of other legislation that does not have such a requirement—not create an imbalance or a danger that we are specifically saying that, in this case, a body should listen to the committee and that, in the case of every other piece of legislation, a body should not?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
Some of what you are saying seems to repeat what we have heard before: that is, that the culture of the SQA has been seriously flawed. We are all agreed on that point. As I have done before, I question whether that is about the structure or about making sure that the right people are in place.
My second point follows on from my previous intervention about setting up a new body, which would also require premises, staff, costs and so on. I would hope that Mr Ross would be in favour of simplifying the public sector landscape and cutting the number of civil servants, but this amendment seems to go in the opposite direction.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
John Mason
I take Ross Greer’s point, but I go to many meetings—as, I am sure, he does—at which some groups are quite passive and just follow the lead, while others are more active. Is he really convinced that forcing the board to have a vote will suddenly switch it from being passive to being active?
