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 1522 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
It was simply down to timescales.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
I have already said that I know that concern has been raised about the figures for aftercare. I note that the figures were provided by local authorities. We asked for the most up-to-date information, so that was the best information that we had to go on.
It is difficult to put a price on aftercare, because it can be delivered and provided in different ways. As we have alluded to this morning, every child and young adult’s needs are different.
Based on the figures that were provided, a good effort was made to realistically envision those costs, but I have been clear that further work, especially in relation to aftercare, is on-going with COSLA to tighten those up a little.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
Absolutely. In fact, I slightly disagree with Mr Adam—I do not believe that this is a starting point at all, I believe that this is a mid-point. We are in 2025 and halfway towards delivery of the Promise. I feel that a host of work has already been done, and is on-going, that has made significant improvements to the lives of children and young people—we hear that daily.
I believe that many of the provisions in the legislation will have extremely positive impacts. As I have already clarified, there will obviously be other areas of consideration further down the line, but I believe that the bill speaks to a lot of the issues that have been raised with me and with the Government through the years in relation to the experiences of children and young people with care experience.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
We absolutely must strike a balance. There will be consequences, but I hope that we would all agree that there should be no excessive profiteering from the care of children and young people. If we do take that stance because we think that it is necessary to delivering on the Promise by 2030, we must take steps towards that. The steps that we are taking are timeous and proportionate and will give us time to develop the work and get it right, which, as I said at the start of the meeting, is my priority.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
There are two ideas at the heart of the proposal for a register: promoting a positive experience, and the safety of children. A national register will work to strengthen safeguarding and transparency so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. The Scottish child abuse inquiry has heard about the need for more consistent and joined-up protection for children and the idea of a national register is a direct response to that.
At present, we have no national mechanism for tracking who has been approved as a foster carer, what their history is and whether their current status is active, suspended or withdrawn. A national register would help to support consistent oversight of foster carers across Scotland and to ensure that fostering services have access to accurate, up-to-date information so that decisions can be made in the best interests of children and young people.
As with other aspects of the bill, we have given ourselves time to more fully develop the idea of a register and to work with those who have an interest in order to get that right. We also have the experience of the adoption register.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
It is outwith the scope when it comes to challenging, but not—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
There are certainly similarities and there are things that we can learn from the adoption register, which supports agencies to match approved prospective adopters with children who are in need. That speaks to much of what I have just said. There is an element of safeguarding and—for lack of a better term—an element of making the matching process a little easier. I am not saying that a foster carers register would exactly draw on the adoption register, but there are similarities that we can look at and there are always lessons that we can learn.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
I have directly discussed that with several stakeholder organisations and I know that there are concerns about the independence of that register. I do not have a straight answer at the moment, but the register will be created by secondary legislation, which will allow us time to consider the points about having an independent holder for the register, as well as other matters.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
As I said, I am very clear that I know that there has been engagement with COSLA on a number of aspects of the bill, so further discussion is required if there is a point of contention, and I intend to have that further discussion.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Natalie Don-Innes
When I met Who Cares? Scotland yesterday, that issue was not mentioned, but I know that it has come up previously. Again, we will consider that suggestion, but there are already appropriate ways to log complaints, which Ms Dunbar referred to, or whatever it might be. I go back to my original answer about the rationale for the register. I appreciate that, on the face of it, the register does not necessarily seem like a big, flashy aspect of the Promise bill, but it will help to enhance safeguarding for children across Scotland. Anything that we can do to further that aim will be considered when the regulations are drafted.
