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 1143 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
If you are returned to government, are you going to preside over what the SFC has outlined? I accept what you say in relation to the one-year budget that we are discussing, but it is the future planning that I am interested in.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I am not sure that I would call the largest uplift to the settlement marginal and I do not think that some of the commentary around that does that. We could get into the debate around what the cabinet secretary would suggest is done in order to ensure—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I am quite sure that you do, and I am quite sure that we have heard it before.
I wonder whether I can turn to capital. We discuss that a lot and the cabinet secretary is always keen to point to the Government’s record on capital investment. However, the Scottish Fiscal Commission projects that there would be a decrease in capital spending, including financial transactions, of 3.9 per cent in cash terms, which is down 6 per cent in real terms. What is the cabinet secretary’s view of what that would mean for the education estate? I appreciate that she is going to tell me all that has happened in the estate, but that there is still work to do.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
On that point, does the cabinet secretary accept that, as was reported on recently in The Herald, some of that work was done pre-2007 and that the baseline has moved?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
The cabinet secretary is keen to point to the role that local government plays and the 32 different versions of provision, which she often alludes to. What is her view on the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities’ comments that the budget does not address the scale of pressures that councils face? The commentary around that is that councils are considering council tax increases. Does she recognise that the projected reductions in council budgets will have an impact on resourcing? We have had a debate in the chamber about classroom resources and what is available to teachers. Does the cabinet secretary share COSLA’s concerns?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Does the cabinet secretary recognise that there is a resourcing challenge here? This brings me back to the exchange that we had on local authority budgets. I recognise a lot of what she has said about trying to get some standardisation or commonality of service, if you like, but she will recognise that local authorities often have to make decisions that are based on children having to have higher tariff needs or to be higher on a staged intervention—or STINT—scale, for example. That is because—let us be honest—the resource is often just not there to provide more specialised support, such as individual PSAs, to pupils. She will recognise the resourcing problem that exists in that respect.
I declare an interest: I used to work for Enable Scotland, which, back in 2016 or 2017, authored a report on the presumption of mainstreaming and the 22 steps to inclusion that would be required. I recall John Swinney embracing that report at the time and saying that the Government would take action on a number of its recommendations, which cover what we are discussing today.
That has not happened. Do you have any reflections on that, given how long your party has been in government?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
The cabinet secretary perhaps did not pick up on my point that, 10 years ago, in the previous session of Parliament, organisations were making the same points, particularly around data and around what we do not know.
I appreciate that the cabinet secretary said earlier that she does not want to be bound by the decisions of her predecessors, but what has the Government been doing? We are now, at the end of this session of Parliament, talking about collecting data and reviewing much of the provision, but such calls have been made for 10 years or more.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Would the cabinet secretary accept that, with the presumption to mainstream, people were ringing alarm bells about their concerns about inclusion and making sure that young people were properly included?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. We have a one-year budget, but there are projections beyond that, which will be a challenge for whoever forms the Government. There has been commentary about the potential need for in-year revisions to the budget after the election. The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s estimates show that resource spending on education and skills is projected to decrease each year over a three-year period, falling by £69 million in real terms by 2028-29. What does the cabinet secretary think will be the impact of that future cut and what sits behind that modelling?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I absolutely understand that point. We will have an election and a new Government will be formed. However, do you recognise that the Fraser of Allander Institute and others have given evidence to the Finance and Public Administration Committee on the problems that have built up over time, and that the stark position in the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s projection will have to be dealt with? Do you recognise that it is a serious challenge that will have to be addressed? What planning have officials in your department done in relation to those projections?
