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 1158 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. I will start with some of the themes that have previously been raised—in particular, the international comparison. When Professor Powell last appeared before the committee, he stated that there was a desire to have 1 per cent of the international student market, which is around 700 students. I am keen to understand how many international students were recruited this year.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
You recognise that 1 per cent figure that you had shared. Is that still the aspiration?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
That was very helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Are you able to say from which countries, predominantly, you have recruited the 80 students?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Would anyone else on the panel like to make a contribution to this point? We heard about the island of Ireland, both north and south, and the investment that is being made there in rural education. The Government of Ireland has just announced €4.5 million for a distributed campus support fund to balance the regional issues that we have heard about this morning.
Should Scotland learn from that with regard to how we support the communities where there has been disinvestment from SRUC in campuses? I appreciate that it might be too little, too late, but it would be useful to get your sense about whether the Government should look across the water to what is happening in Ireland.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
That would be helpful. On the point that you made about internal recruitment from within the other nations of the United Kingdom, do you recognise the challenge in relation to Northern Ireland’s rural colleges? The Greenmount campus in County Antrim is receiving £32 million for redevelopment, and Loughry campus in County Tyrone has a £43 million investment. Do you recognise that that investment—from the Northern Ireland Executive and those colleges in partnership—will be a challenge when you are trying to attract students who would normally come from our closest neighbours?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Are you concerned? At the outset of this morning’s evidence session, the convener mentioned those discussions with young farmers and NFU Scotland about the opportunities that exist for them elsewhere. With such a significant investment in Northern Ireland, which can be accessed fairly easily from Scotland, do you recognise that it will be a challenge to keep pace with the development there, particularly because those colleges are focusing on food science, innovation, research and student accommodation? This morning, we have been hearing about challenges in relation to the disinvestment in campuses in Scotland.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I agree that the placement must be appropriate for the best interests of a child; what this legislation does is create several processes to go through that. If it is in the best interests of the child and there is an urgency to the placement, do you recognise the risk to children and young people who are living in England or Northern Ireland if they cannot quickly access the placement that is required in Scotland?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
What further consultation or discussion have you had with those in the secure care sector around the concerns that they raised about the impact that limiting cross-border placements would have on the services that they run in Scotland?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I was not a member of the committee when evidence was taken on the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill. However, my understanding, from reading some of the exchanges and evidence that was given, is that part of the rationale for reducing cross-border placements was—this was, I think, from the Scottish Government and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland—to try to force the English system to become better by reducing the amount of placements that came to Scotland and therefore compelling the previous UK Government to do better.
From your exchange with Mr Rennie, I understand that the numbers have decreased. From what you have said, minister, you appear to be having a positive and fruitful dialogue with the new UK Government about what it is doing to improve the system. If the numbers have gone down and there is now an improvement, if you like, in the system in England—which is very welcome, of course—does the rationale for reducing cross-border placements still stand?
