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 3369 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry: Post-Inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
John Mason
I presume that it would suit some of the older students to be at home, if they have children or caring responsibilities, but only for some courses.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry: Post-Inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
John Mason
In other words, there is a real problem.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry: Post-Inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
John Mason
Andy Witty, you have oversight of the whole country. Is the picture consistent across the country, or is it particularly the case in some areas?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry: Post-Inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
John Mason
Mr Cowie, most of us think of the north-east as the richest part of Scotland, but we realise that there is some poverty there, too. The 2023 committee report talked about students dropping out. Is that happening?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry: Post-Inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
John Mason
We could probably explore this for longer. Does anyone else have anything to say?
11:00Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry: Post-Inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
John Mason
I am not always patient. I am delighted that Glasgow is going to have three stand-alone colleges—and that one of the principals is going to be Joanna Campbell, I believe. I will therefore start with you, Joanna, on the theme of student poverty, which I assume affects most colleges but would certainly affect Glasgow colleges. A study has said that more than 60 per cent of students report that they are in financial difficulty. Is that figure realistic? How severe is the problem? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Youth Parliament
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
John Mason
What about other statutory organisations, such as the police? Do the police come to you or to the SYP to ask your opinion?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Youth Parliament
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
John Mason
Did many MSPs come and engage with you at that time?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Youth Parliament
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
John Mason
Thank you, convener. I was not necessarily expecting to come in just now, but I have a question on the point that—as we have just heard from Beinn Grant—the emphasis should not be on university alone. On the whole, are schools emphasising university too much?
Linked to that, we have four women on the panel and one guy. Is enough being done to encourage women into engineering and other subjects that women have traditionally not studied?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Youth Parliament
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
John Mason
The problem is that everybody comes to the Parliament and says that they want more money, and everybody says that it is not their job to say where the money should come from. From that point of view, you are very representative of society, but somebody has to get the money from somewhere.
