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 1956 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
The result of the division is: For 3, Against 7, Abstentions 0.
Amendment 130 disagreed to.
Amendment 275 moved—[Pam Duncan-Glancy].
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
There will be a division.
For
Duncan-Glancy, Pam (Glasgow) (Lab)
Rennie, Willie (North East Fife) (LD)
Against
Adam, George (Paisley) (SNP)
Briggs, Miles (Lothian) (Con)
Dunbar, Jackie (Aberdeen Donside) (SNP)
FitzPatrick, Joe (Dundee City West) (SNP)
Greer, Ross (West Scotland) (Green)
Haughey, Clare (Rutherglen) (SNP)
Mason, John (Glasgow Shettleston) (Ind)
Ross, Douglas (Highlands and Islands) (Con)
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
The result of the division is: For 4, Against 6, Abstentions 0.
Amendment 276 disagreed to.
Amendment 277 not moved.
Amendment 278 moved—[Pam Duncan-Glancy].
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
There will be a division.
For
Briggs, Miles (Lothian) (Con)
Duncan-Glancy, Pam (Glasgow) (Lab)
Greer, Ross (West Scotland) (Green)
Rennie, Willie (North East Fife) (LD)
Ross, Douglas (Highlands and Islands) (Con)
Against
Adam, George (Paisley) (SNP)
Dunbar, Jackie (Aberdeen Donside) (SNP)
FitzPatrick, Joe (Dundee City West) (SNP)
Haughey, Claire (Rutherglen) (SNP)
Mason, John (Glasgow Shettleston) (Ind)
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
The question is, that amendment 17 be agreed to. Are we agreed?
Members: No.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
Amendment 77, in the name of Ross Greer, is grouped with amendments 78, 311, 314, 324, 325, 172, 326, 327, 329, 330, 91, 335, 336, 343 and 352.
I point out that amendment 311 is pre-empted by amendment 158; amendment 314 is pre-empted by amendment 162; and amendment 336 is pre-empted by amendment 179. Amendments 158, 162 and 336 were previously debated in the group entitled “Independence of the Chief Inspector”.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
I will wind up the debate by thanking the cabinet secretary and other members for their contributions. It has been a helpful and useful debate. There is general acceptance that there is an issue here. How we solve that issue is something that we can discuss on a cross-party basis. I agree that we should not tackle the issue in isolation.
I take on board the points that were made by Jackie Dunbar and the cabinet secretary, but we can only deal with what is in front of us—namely, the bill that we are seeking to amend.
I remember the cabinet secretary’s final words to me in our call on Monday. She said that she was going to look at the art of the possible with regard to this matter and, I hope, others. With a view to our looking at the art of the possible and having further discussions about that, I am not minded to press amendment 297.
Amendment 297, by agreement, withdrawn.
Amendments 298 to 301 not moved.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
I spoke to my party’s SPCB representative this afternoon about that. I accept the points that have been made. However, I am clear that I want the role to be made through the corporate body, because I want that role to be completely independent from Scottish Government ministers and from the new qualifications Scotland.
When the amendments were first drafted by the legislation team, the role was to be an appointment by the Scottish ministers rather than the corporate body. I thought that, because of the concerns that the cabinet secretary has raised about the current operational independence of the SQA from Scottish Government ministers, it would be better to have a clean break and a truly independent individual and body. The way to facilitate that is through the corporate body—the parliamentary corporation.
I do not want to go over the ground of the discussions that we have had about higher history. However, it is worth remembering some of the comments that were made at the time. In response to a question that I raised in the chamber on the issue, the cabinet secretary said that she
“acknowledged the various concerns that have been raised by history teachers in the SATH survey responses and the need to rebuild trust and confidence.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2025; c 43.]
Some members of the committee believe that rebuilding trust and confidence will be done by the new individuals at the top of the SQA. I still believe that those people have to prove themselves in those roles. They have been in them for only a short period. I have not had the same positive experience as other members have had of meeting with the SQA—only today, my meeting with the SQA chief executive, chair and chief examiner has been cancelled for the third time. That will be rearranged, but it is proving difficult to have those discussions.
There is no doubt that teachers were deeply worried about the outcome of the SQA inquiry—they were worried about the findings and about the way in which the inquiry was established and carried out. There is no proof of this, but I believe that, had similar or identical results been produced by an independent individual, there would have been more acceptance of them. People still might not have been happy with the conclusions and I would still have been challenging some of them, but I think that a lot of the issues were caused by the lack of an independent individual looking at the situation, taking evidence and determining the conclusion.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
There will be a division.
For
Adam, George (Paisley) (SNP)
Briggs, Miles (Lothian) (Con)
Dunbar, Jackie (Aberdeen Donside) (SNP)
FitzPatrick, Joe (Dundee City West) (SNP)
Greer, Ross (West Scotland) (Green)
Haughey, Clare (Rutherglen) (SNP)
Mason, John (Glasgow Shettleston) (Ind)
Rennie, Willie (North East Fife) (LD)
Ross, Douglas (Highlands and Islands) (Con)
Abstentions
Duncan-Glancy, Pam (Glasgow) (Lab)
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 30 April 2025
Douglas Ross
Amendment 290, in the name of Stephen Kerr, is grouped with amendments 293, 294 and 296.
