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 2257 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
I will move on to my next question. We have talked a lot about finances, and I hear and understand your warnings about the provision in the light of that situation. In both your sectors, what additional support—from both the Scottish Government and the Funding Council—would you ideally like to have at this time? I know that everybody will say, “Well, we want more money.” However, if we imagine that that is not possible given the prevailing fiscal climate, what additional support would you ideally like to have?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
I note with interest that, with that framing around flexibility, transparency and predictability, you are talking in business terms, because that is exactly what businesses would look for.
Shona, do you concur with that in relation to the college sector? As ever with these things, we have arrived at a place without looking back, and people will say, “We would not necessarily have chosen to start from here.” Is that a useful framing for you? I would appreciate your insights.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I want to follow up on what was a slightly technical discussion earlier with Professor Iain Gillespie. The framing was that some people have said that institutions in Scotland are at risk of failure. My colleague Willie Rennie and I asked Professor Gillespie a number of questions, and he explained that he thought that—this is in my words—the probability of that was low because of the prudent nature of their gearing or debt to fee income ratio, which is set to 30 per cent.
My first question is a quick one. Is that limit set by you, or is it in the universities’ articles of association? Why is there such a prudent regime in Scotland compared with what is happening with universities in the rest of the UK?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
I am labouring the point because, until the issue came up this morning, I had heard a narrative that was about the UK university sector. If you look at the question from a financial perspective and consider Scotland’s level of average gearing, which I did after the first session, the risk in Scotland is utterly and fundamentally different from that in the rest of the UK. It is therefore not true to say that the risks to institutions in Scotland are the same.
Thank you for clarifying the role of university courts. Does the Scottish Funding Council set fiscal rules for colleges in respect of the attitude to debt and deficit? I want to understand that point, too.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
That leads to my next question, which is on what I would term fiscal flexibilities for colleges. We have heard a lot of talk about our being stuck in a trap as more money is needed at a time when we know that the wider financial environment is challenging. What is your thinking in relation to fiscal flexibilities, particularly for colleges, especially given that they are public sector bodies? Are you discussing and considering those issues?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
Yes—that is part of the issue. What sort of non-financial support would you benefit from getting from the Scottish Government? As this is a pre-budget session, we are terribly focused on the finance, but are there areas where you would like to see more non-financial support? I perhaps alluded to that by mentioning fiscal flexibilities, but there could be other areas as well.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 12 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
Where is that set, then? Is that set in articles of association?
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 11 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
Not only have we witnessed a drop in the number of international students who come to study here, but, as the cabinet secretary correctly notes, Brexit has brutally removed opportunities for Scotland’s universities to build international relationships. Does she share my concern that Scotland’s further and higher education sectors are suffering under a refusal from Westminster—from the Tory and Labour parties alike—to acknowledge, own and address the damage of Brexit, and that the best way to address that damage is to return to membership of the European Union?
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 11 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of reports that Scottish universities’ budgets have been impacted by £100 million due to a 20 per cent drop in applications from international students in the last academic year as a result of new United Kingdom Government immigration rules. (S6T-02044)
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 11 June 2024
Michelle Thomson
Does the cabinet secretary agree with the recent statement by Sir Anton Muscatelli of the University of Glasgow, who said that
“By restricting student visas, the UK is endangering its world-class university sector”?
It is time to stop the senseless self-harm to our economy and to focus on our national assets. To have a discriminatory visa system that is designed to satisfy the extreme prejudice of the anti-immigration lobby is an act of colossal self-harm. Surely what we need is to encourage more undergraduate and graduate students by removing all visa impediments.
