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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1121 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I agree that the placement must be appropriate for the best interests of a child; what this legislation does is create several processes to go through that. If it is in the best interests of the child and there is an urgency to the placement, do you recognise the risk to children and young people who are living in England or Northern Ireland if they cannot quickly access the placement that is required in Scotland?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
What further consultation or discussion have you had with those in the secure care sector around the concerns that they raised about the impact that limiting cross-border placements would have on the services that they run in Scotland?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I was not a member of the committee when evidence was taken on the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill. However, my understanding, from reading some of the exchanges and evidence that was given, is that part of the rationale for reducing cross-border placements was—this was, I think, from the Scottish Government and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland—to try to force the English system to become better by reducing the amount of placements that came to Scotland and therefore compelling the previous UK Government to do better.
From your exchange with Mr Rennie, I understand that the numbers have decreased. From what you have said, minister, you appear to be having a positive and fruitful dialogue with the new UK Government about what it is doing to improve the system. If the numbers have gone down and there is now an improvement, if you like, in the system in England—which is very welcome, of course—does the rationale for reducing cross-border placements still stand?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Professor Alexis Jay and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs
Meeting date: 17 December 2025
Paul O'Kane
That is helpful for clarity.
I will move on to the strategic group and the idea of a review. People are slightly conflating that with the fact that there is a strategic group that is doing work but there is not yet an independent review. It would be useful to understand your view of that for the Official Report.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Cross-portfolio Session
Meeting date: 17 December 2025
Paul O'Kane
Certainly. What was your understanding of what John Swinney meant when he said that recovery in our schools was a priority? What should that look like by the end of the parliamentary session?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Cross-portfolio Session
Meeting date: 17 December 2025
Paul O'Kane
I have a closing comment, because I am conscious that the convener wants to move on. As I think that I said in the chamber during the statement, we accept that, but we need to be careful and drill down into exactly what we are talking about in terms of statistics, rather than grouping together the entire primary experience into one measure.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Cross-portfolio Session
Meeting date: 17 December 2025
Paul O'Kane
That was quite a long answer—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Cross-portfolio Session
Meeting date: 17 December 2025
Paul O'Kane
—but the question was: what was the sum total of the Government’s ambition when it talked about recovery being a priority? Was it about turning a corner three months out from the end of the Parliament, or did you have some vision that we would be further on? Attendance, for example, is at 91 per cent, which is below the pre-Covid average of 93 per cent—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Cross-portfolio Session
Meeting date: 17 December 2025
Paul O'Kane
With respect, cabinet secretary, I have done that. I was an education convener for five years as well as a member of an improvement collaborative, and I worked closely with a wide range of teachers in the west. You are indeed right that there was a variance of opinion, but a lot of learning could be taken from RICs such as the West Partnership.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Cross-portfolio Session
Meeting date: 17 December 2025
Paul O'Kane
I was making more a general point about the fact that, in the six-year period in which we have not been in Erasmus+, SEEP has only just reached the test-and-learn phase. Was SEEP at a stage at which it was going to expand, prior to the news this morning?
