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 1769 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
As the discussion has continued, I have realised that, as well as the composition of the board, some of the amendments that might come at stage 2 could be about splitting the functions of the organisation for which you are seeking to create a board. If the functions were split—for example, if the accreditation function was taken out of qualifications Scotland—would you be recruiting to an organisation that is very different to the one that the order allows? Would you be recruiting for a position that exists? Would you be recruiting for a job that does not exist? It does not make much sense to me.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
I am asking about leavers’ qualifications, as opposed to initial destinations.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
This exchange is extraordinary. It is really odd that we are being asked to vote on the order when we do not yet know the shape of the board that the Government will be asked to recruit to, because stage 2 could bring many amendments that would add other people.
I have many questions. My first is on the recruitment. Should the motion on the order be agreed to today, does the cabinet secretary consider that she will, for example, appoint to the board a member of a trade union?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
However, when it comes to the process that you are asking us to agree to today, you do not know who you will recruit, to what particular board function you will recruit them, or how many people you will recruit. Or, do you know any of those things?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
I am sorry—I mean the board of qualifications Scotland. You are right. I misspoke. You do not yet know how many board members you will need to recruit through the process, because that could change at stage 2.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Can the cabinet secretary tell us how many teachers are employed on temporary contracts using PEF?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
It relates to PEF as well as the attainment challenge, because it is important to have staff in schools, and if the staff do not feel secure in their role it is difficult for them to pass that feeling of security on to children and young people.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
The cabinet secretary is well aware of the reasons for that.
Finally on PEF, I met a headteacher in my Glasgow region last week. She said that the school that she looks after has a great number of needs but is struggling to get an associated allocation of PEF because of the way in which the funding is distributed. When will the allocation of PEF—including the way in which it is allocated—be reviewed?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Good morning and thank you for the information that you have shared with us so far. First, I will ask some more questions in the space that we have been just been discussing.
We have heard from a lot of witnesses that free school meals data, for example, would be a useful measure of individual fair access and that there is legislation in place across other parts of the United Kingdom, such as England and Wales, where data can be shared with UCAS to allow that. We also heard that it would be difficult to scale up the current pilot in the north-east.
On that basis—although I do not want to step on other members’ toes—could you tell us a bit about what you are doing to improve data analysis around fair access?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Pam Duncan-Glancy
Related to that is the issue of student experience. We have heard evidence that the holistic approach to fair access needs to be progressed, but that it will require work on the existing credit-based funding model. Of course, that model focuses on input rather than output, which in turn drives a particular focus on, say, full-time learning, and we know that the demographics are shifting away from that. What is the Funding Council doing to address some of that and to offer a more agile and flexible approach to institutions through its funding model?
