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 1344 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
I will touch a little more on care experience. Sections 5 and 6 of the bill refer to guidance for public authorities and organisations in relation to care experience. Some responses to the call for views were supportive of the proposals for guidance, but there were concerns that the bill does not include a universal definition, which would instead be left to secondary legislation.
Does anyone have a point to make about that? I will come to you first, Mr Berry. Do you want to come in on the definition of care experience before I open up the question to everyone else?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
That was the view that we heard from the children last night.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
Does the bill rely too much on secondary legislation or is it about flexibility? Perhaps it depends very much on the case. What is your view?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
Fiona Whitelock, I will come to you on that one, because the other key point the kids made yesterday was about their input into advocacy. In previous evidence, Who Cares? Scotland, spoke about the importance of independent advocacy. One key issue is how we evaluate that advocacy and another is how we ensure that there is input from those who use advocacy services. What are your thoughts on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
I do not think that there is an easy answer.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
Some of the feedback concerned the importance of achieving a balance between flexibility and clarity. That might touch on Jim Savege’s point about each area being different—he mentioned Banchory and Peterhead, in Aberdeenshire. Is it better to have flexibility at the cost of clarity? Is it bad to have more flexibility in the process?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
Do you have anything to add, Jim?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
I want to touch on advocacy services. When we met care-experienced children last night, which was an enlightening experience, a key issue that came up was advocacy services. We have received feedback that the bill relies too much on secondary legislation, but there has also been recognition that that allows flexibility for future policy development. Does the bill strike the right balance between flexibility and clarity?
What would be required in terms of mapping? That is incredibly important. The point has been made that aftercare is not just about advocacy until someone is 16 or 26; it is needed right through people’s lives. In your experience of mapping, how do you commission and integrate services? You probably heard members of the previous panel say that that is a real challenge and that the approach is different in different parts of the country.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
You have 15 years of experience in local government and as a council leader. What does the situation look like on the ground? Each local authority is slightly different. Aberdeenshire is different from Ayrshire and Glasgow, for example.
The kids we were talking to yesterday were from different parts of Scotland and shared different experiences, but they all mentioned how important advocacy is. In fact, what came across as the most important aspect, not just for aftercare but for housing, was advocacy. I know that you are trying to find the right balance, which is easier said than done, but how do we make that happen on the ground?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Paul McLennan
Does anyone else want to come in?
