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 1019 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
George Adam
No, it is not your fault, convener. I have such a shy, retiring personality that I never managed to get your attention.
Minister, you have talked about investment in wraparound care. I note that, in her opening remarks, the cabinet secretary mentioned working with the SFA on after-school care; I actually had the debate of the week last week, on the importance of football in Scotland, and there was some discussion of the charitable trusts in various clubs that are trying to deliver that care. Is that the type of thing that you are talking about? If so, work is already being done in the community in that respect. Are you talking about getting the SFA to do that sort of care itself? What are you talking about when you say that you are working with the SFA on this?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
George Adam
On the subject of football—I know that I am going off on a slight tangent, convener, but I hope that you will indulge me—I was approached once by a St Mirren chairman. This was a long time ago—he is long away—but he asked me, flippantly, “When are you going to start seconding social workers and people like that into the football club?” I have to say that, when I went away and thought about it, it made sense to me. If you are wearing a football polo shirt from St Mirren, Raith Rovers or wherever, you are going to get a different answer when someone comes to the door. When it comes to wraparound care, could we, with that sort of ethos, help people who are not necessarily going to engage? After all, if you are dealing with poverty, or with parents and young people who might not engage with such things, you need to use absolutely every part of the artillery.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
George Adam
My questions seem to be linked, but it is accidental. PEF is a perfect example of the people on the ground who deliver education taking something that the Government created and turning it into something completely different. When you are considering ideas for the future about how we deal with these issues, is localising some of that on the cards?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
George Adam
The draft budget contains £3.5 billion for the sector. Can you give me a wee bit more detail on how that will assist in improving the pupil teacher ratio in the classroom? That has been another on-going issue over the years.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 15 January 2026
George Adam
Okay. Your reference to “Doctor Who” actually presents the perfect scenario. I know that the co-production with Disney did not quite work out in the end, but we heard evidence last week that the way forward for drama in Scotland is co-production. When we asked, “So, why aren’t we doing it?”, the answer was that that was a question for people like you and, indeed, the BBC itself. So, why are we not doing more of that?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 15 January 2026
George Adam
On the factual side, how do you compete with YouTube and the like? For a start, it is not regulated and there are also the audiences that it gets. I will give you an example. A social influencer in Scotland was invited to the first day that a certain fast-food outlet opened in Paisley, and he got figures on YouTube that would make “The Seven” on BBC Scotland blush. How do you compete with that? How do you get to that stage?
I will give you another example. One of the guys who work for me in my office is a 30-something, he has two kids and he does not watch STV News. I was talking about STV News the other day and he said that he did not watch it. However, if you mention something that was on YouTube—some documentary, say, which, of course, has not been really fact checked or anything—he will give you all the detail about it. How do we compete with that? How do we make the legacy TV and broadcasters relevant?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
STV News and Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 15 January 2026
George Adam
Good morning, everyone. I continue on the subject of changing audiences. Although audiences and the ways in which they access news are changing—the audience for STV is a classic example—when STV journalists come to this committee, they say that they do things for STV news but that they also direct people to STV news by using short-form media in places such as TikTok. We heard earlier that the legacy broadcasters are trying to use that as a way to get people to look at that content. I am interested in that.
I am concerned that there has been a long-term reduction in locally produced hours on commercial radio in Scotland and, now, there is the potential approval for changes to STV North’s “STV News at Six”. I am looking for assurances from Ofcom about how you are acting effectively as a regulator in Scotland, rather than simply ratifying the decisions of broadcasters.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
STV News and Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 15 January 2026
George Adam
The mix that you have got could be taken up by weather and a bit of sport from Aberdeen.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
STV News and Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 15 January 2026
George Adam
That is the key show in the STV line-up.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
STV News and Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 15 January 2026
George Adam
Part of the problem with the situation that we are in now is that the timing is absolutely lousy. There are regulated hours that have to be given. The news content covered by the licence for STV North, which was previously Grampian Television, is in effect being cut, and STV Radio is now being launched. The unions, and others, have argued that journalists’ jobs are being taken away to pay for an STV radio station.
