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 3509 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
Well, is it the case that it is Wayne Powell and the senior management’s way, and dissent from the staff is unfortunate but just something that you are going to get? Do you reflect on the fact that there are community organisations—some in the gallery today—that are very against the plans that you have taken forward as principal? There are staff concerns and we know that there are also student concerns and the wider industry concerns that I articulated at the start. How do you respond to those people? Do you say that you hear them but nothing changes? What is the future for Wayne Powell? What is the long-term future for you as principal, given that staff who have spoken to their representatives who have come to this meeting think that nothing will change and tomorrow it will all go back to normal?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
Did you say that it had become or that it had to become?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
If you were emailing all staff and you had a figure, you will be able to recall that. Was it £5 million or about £5 million? Does that sound right? It was going to result in your organisation employing fewer people, to the tune of a cost of £5 million?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
Is that the end of the reductions in staffing, in terms of a recruitment freeze or looking for people to leave the organisation and not replacing them et cetera?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
We have heard a lot of unhappiness from unions representing staff about pay and conditions. Are you happy with your own salary and conditions?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
That is why I was asking if you are happy with it.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
You said that it is generous and you are aware of the optics. What did you mean by those very specific words that you chose there?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
No, I think that you have articulated that well. Mr Ross?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Energy
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
Thank you very much. I hope that the session will allow us to advance quite a number of the petitions that cover issues that we have had the opportunity to air today.
With that, I suspend the meeting briefly.
11:06
Meeting suspended.
11:09
On resuming—
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Douglas Ross
The next item on our agenda is consideration of continued petitions. I highlight to those joining us or watching online that we still have a considerable number of open petitions to consider before the dissolution of Parliament, following our final meeting in March. Therefore, our focus is very much on the issues on which we feel we can make progress in the time remaining, notwithstanding the hugely important issues that underpin many of the petitions that we have to consider. It will simply not be possible for us to advance, in the current session of Parliament, the work on many of the petitions that we still deem to be of considerable importance, and that may well require fresh petitions to be submitted in the next session of Parliament.
The petition that we are going to consider first, with due deference to one of our guests, who is currently outside in the hall, is PE2099, lodged by Lynne McRitchie, which seeks to stop the proposed centralisation of specialist neonatal units in NHS Scotland. Specifically, it calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to stop the planned downgrading of established and high-performing specialist neonatal intensive care services across NHS Scotland from level 3 to level 2 and to commission an independent review of that decision in the light of contradictory expert opinions on centralising services.
We considered the petition on 10 December, just before the Christmas recess, and at that point we took considerable evidence from the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, Jenni Minto. During the evidence session, we covered a number of issues including capacity and resilience, engagement with families, funding and the importance of family-centred care.
The Scottish Government has provided follow-up information on the number of beds in the three units that will be intensive care units under the new model. The submission notes that the modelling work recommended additional beds in each unit: an additional 10 to 12 beds in Glasgow, four in Edinburgh and 1.5 in Aberdeen. I note, however, that those additional increases were anticipated in the plan and did not come about as a result of any further consideration arising from the airing of these issues in committee. I imagine, therefore, that the concerns of clinicians still stand, because they were aware of that potential increase in capacity, notwithstanding the concerns that they have about overall capacity.
The committee has received a new written submission from the petitioner. It highlights sections from “The Best Start Five-Year Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Care 2017–2024 Report”, which emphasises the importance of family-centred care. The petitioner compares that with the Scottish Government’s focus on clinical decision making. She states:
“The Scottish Government continues to cherry-pick the information contained in the report … disregarding the”
parts of it that set out a vision of truly family-centred care. The submission also reiterates concerns about families not being listened to during the focus group sessions and in meetings with the Scottish Government.
Recess has taken place in the intervening period, but I know that our discussions with the minister on these matters are still fresh in our minds. In the light of that, do members have any suggestions as to how we might now proceed?
