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 1619 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
You should try it.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
There is access.
We are very short on time. My last question is on page 3 of the Audit Scotland briefing, which gives a statistic for dedicated ASL provision. It is quite a low statistic, which is why I am asking about it. It says that 20 per cent of all schools—about 460—have “dedicated” ASL provision, to use the terminology of the briefing. However, that seems a very low number of schools when, presumably, the need for ASL is prevalent in all schools. Talk me through that.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
The one area that we do not really have time to address, but which deserves more time, is how we support teachers and schools to deliver on this agenda. We are very short on time, but I will ask Mr Rennick a question. In 2021, the Scottish Government made an explicit and overt commitment to increase the number of teachers by 3,500 by the end of this parliamentary session, and, in particular, the number of pupil support assistants by 500. Could you give us a progress update on that?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
Thank you for raising the Hayward review.
All three reviews—the Morgan, the Muir and the Hayward reviews—are helpful, but, next month, it will be five years since the Morgan review was published. There is therefore a sense of frustration that only 53 of the 76 recommendations have been implemented. It is taking a long time. The fact that we have also known that the problem has been on the increase for a long time has perhaps driven some of the lines of questioning this morning.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
They are, but 27 per cent of pupils in East Lothian are designated as having additional support needs because of behavioural difficulties, and we know that violence in classrooms is on the increase and has been for a number of years. I appreciate that the majority of pupils go to school and behave well, and are brought up well—I understand that. However, in this case, we are looking at ASL, and there is clearly a category of people who are struggling.
That leads to outcomes, the work on which by Audit Scotland I am intrigued by. We know that pupils with additional support needs have lower attendance rates and higher exclusion rates, and there is a 20 per cent gap in curriculum for excellence level outcomes, as well as lower positive destination rates. Those pupils are performing poorly on a number of metrics, and that cannot be acceptable, can it?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
How do we balance that with the risk of people perceiving those measures as plugging big holes in council finances, albeit with the right intention? Environmental intentions would be seen as laudable and would garner cross-party support. However, is there a concern that, if the perception is that the money raised from those so-called punitive measures is not ring fenced and is not reinvested in active or sustainable travel or in other improvements to roads or public services, the additional measures that big cities are asking for will raise huge amounts of money that will go into the black hole of local government?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
That is a helpful tone. What do you mean by unnecessary?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
That is very helpful. What engagement have you had with the new UK Government about potential capital funding for transport infrastructure projects in Scotland? What has the response been to any requests?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
I know that she has a sore throat.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Jamie Greene
I know that, so I will try to spread my questions across the panel. I do have quite a lot of ground to cover, though, and I am afraid that you are first up, cabinet secretary.
I want to take you right back to the beginning of the session, when the convener asked whether you accept not just the report’s recommendations but its content and findings. Turning to paragraph 1 on page 3, which sets out the first of the key messages, I think that the first two sentences are fair in talking about transport as a source of greenhouse gas emissions and the “ambitious” nature of the target in the first place. Just for the record, is there anything else in that paragraph that you agree with? That was very unclear from your first answer. Do you agree with the rest of that paragraph?
