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 3214 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Richard Leonard
You are describing an international phenomenon, but the briefing is about the Scottish Government and its responsibilities. Key message 4 says:
“the Scottish Government has not planned effectively for the potential impact of this ... approach to ASL.”
How do you respond to that?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Richard Leonard
Our principal agenda item this morning is further consideration of the briefing, “Additional support for learning”, which was prepared jointly by the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission. I am pleased to welcome representatives of the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.
From the Scottish Government, I welcome Neil Rennick, who is the director general of education and justice; Stella Smith, who is the unit head for additional support for learning; and Clair Henderson, who is the team leader for additional support for learning. Alongside them, from COSLA, are Laura Caven, who is the chief officer for children and young people and the co-chair of the additional support for learning project board, which we might have some questions about over the course of this morning; Suzanne McLeod, who is a policy manager in the employers team; and Joanna Anderson, who is a policy manager for the local government and finance team.
We would like to put a number of questions to your teams this morning but, before we do so, I invite the director general to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Richard Leonard
Before we move on, I go back to a fundamental point that the Auditor General made when he gave evidence before the committee on 19 March. He said that there had been
“an almost eightfold increase in the number of children and young people who need additional support for learning.”
He added:
“However, that is not reflected in how councils are funded for their education service.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 19 March 2025; c 7-8.]
Do you accept that criticism, director general?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Richard Leonard
If you will forgive me for saying so, there is a bit of an air of complacency about what you have said. On 19 March—just a few weeks ago—the Auditor General also said:
“there now needs to be a fundamental review of how the system is operating and whether it is meeting the needs of children and young people”.—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 19 March 2025; c 23.]
That sounds like a pretty fundamental challenge to the way in which the provision of additional support for learning is being funded, how the funds are being distributed and the extent to which the monitoring and data collection process is working properly. Do you accept that criticism?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Richard Leonard
Do you also accept the conclusion that it is
“difficult to assess whether the Scottish Government, councils and their partners are planning for and providing the appropriate support to meet pupils’ needs, in line with their rights”?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Richard Leonard
Key message 1 is about the context in which you are operating and delivering the services. It talks about an “eightfold increase” in the number of pupils receiving additional support for learning, so there has been a huge rise in the scale of demand for such support. The gender breakdown shows that boys are more likely than girls to need additional support in our school system, and there is a contrast between the least deprived areas and the most deprived areas—the requirement for additional support in the most deprived areas is twice as high as it is in the least deprived areas. Again, to confirm, do you accept those findings as being an accurate assessment of where we are?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much indeed. You have told us about the recommendations that have been taken forward and have acknowledged the findings of the briefing by the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission, but, for the record, does the Scottish Government accept its findings, conclusions and key messages?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 14th meeting in 2025 of the Public Audit Committee.
Under the first agenda item, members of the committee are invited to decide whether to take agenda items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review Committee [Draft]
SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Richard Leonard
But are you the subject of audit by Audit Scotland?
SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review Committee [Draft]
SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review
Meeting date: 1 May 2025
Richard Leonard
They sound very thorough. I will put the same question to Craig Naylor. As a smaller organisation—compared with the Mental Welfare Commission, for example—what is your perspective on the audit, both internal and external? Is it disproportionate? Is it overly burdensome?
