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 671 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Angus Robertson
Convener, with your permission, can I help with Mr Kerr’s lack of knowledge in this area? I draw his attention to the fact that the Welsh Labour Government has said publicly that it would welcome the United Kingdom Government entering into discussions with the European Union about rejoining Erasmus+.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Angus Robertson
This is my initial update for the committee. The engagement and the tone of the engagement have been good. What is more difficult to understand is the relative priorities of the UK Government. That was Mr Bibby’s question, and it was a good question but we do not know the answer to it.
There has been some effort to work out what the European Union’s emerging position is going to be, what the UK’s emerging position is going to be and where there might be trade-offs. Going back to Mr Harvie’s questions about process and where we fit in, the situation facing us is uncertain and, effectively, ad hoc. At least we are invited to attend meetings and are told that we are being listened to. What is not yet apparent is the extent to which negotiations will occur on our behalf.
It is true to say that there was a much higher preponderance of Scottish institutions and Scottish students taking up places in Erasmus+. Therefore, being part of Erasmus+ might be viewed by others as being less of a priority for them than it is for us. We are trying to impress on the UK Government that it is not just a financial decision; it is also about goodwill. It is not just about Scottish students being able to study elsewhere in Europe, but about European Union students being able to study here. We have seen an 81 per cent drop—we have caught up with those numbers, but only in part, and the students concerned are from countries and parts of the world that bring challenges. For example, the biggest single international cohort of students in Edinburgh now comes from the People’s Republic of China. We should be looking closely at how we can support our universities. The international student cohort is very important for them, and being part of Erasmus+ would help with that.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Angus Robertson
Mr Kerr has invited me to give a yes or no answer, but I think that it would be more sensible for me to understand what the different relative positions would be. If that were the position of the UK Government, what would the position of the European Union institutions be in relation to that? As soon as I have greater clarification on that, I will be happy to come back to you.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Angus Robertson
Convener, I am trying to make the point that, as I have said to the committee, we are about to learn a lot more about the UK Government’s position.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Angus Robertson
If you are asking me to talk in concrete terms about a UK Government scheme that may change on the basis of the proposals that are about to be set out, I would prefer to reserve my position until I have looked at the proposals for an enhanced scheme relative to that which is currently in place.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Angus Robertson
I am getting to that. Notwithstanding the fact that Creative Scotland is an arm’s-length organisation, it has been working with the Scottish Government to explain the process that it is engaged in, what financial quantum would be required for multiyear funding to be introduced and the range of organisations that could and would be financially supported as part of that change. The process has been made clear to the Scottish Government, but we are not involved in Creative Scotland’s operational decisions around that process.
As I think that the member is aware, organisations have applied for multiyear funding. Creative Scotland knows who they are, how many of them there are and how much support they want to receive. The Scottish Government has been involved in the conversation, because we support the introduction of multiyear funding and we want to work with Creative Scotland to make sure that the process works well. We want the funding model for regularly funded organisations to be broader and deeper with regard to the number of organisations that are supported—that would mean significantly more organisations being supported—and the scale of funding than is currently the case.
That is why I do not recognise the characterisation by others of the funding as being spread so thinly. However, we are now getting into the territory of recommendations that I have not seen, which the board of Creative Scotland will consider later in the month, and the announcement that it is yet to make. I will be looking closely at that announcement—along with, no doubt, Mr Kerr and everybody else—in order to be satisfied that the process is as foundational and transformational as I hope and believe it will be.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Angus Robertson
No, I do not accept that. I suspect that we will come back to the issue when we actually have the facts before us rather than supposition.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Angus Robertson
If I may be allowed to finish, convener, Robert Wilson said:
“The point of the review is that it will cover the whole culture sector”.—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 9 January 2025 c 30.]
I agree with Robert Wilson: it will.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Angus Robertson
I have looked at Robert Wilson’s quote. To quote to Mr Kerr the evidence that Robert Wilson gave to the committee, he said:
“The point of the review is that it will cover the whole culture sector”.—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 9 January 2025; c 30.]
The review that we have announced will examine Creative Scotland’s remit, its functions and how it can best support the culture sector’s ambitions. It will be for Dame Sue Bruce to agree with ministers the review’s remit. That will be informed by the responses to the surveys that we have launched this week.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 16 January 2025
Angus Robertson
I am telling the committee that the position is as follows: the review will examine Creative Scotland’s remit, its functions and how it can best support the culture sector’s ambitions, and it will be for Dame Sue to agree the remit of the review. I will repeat what the chair of Creative Scotland said to the committee, which was:
“The point of the review is that it will cover the whole culture sector”.—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 9 January 2025 c 30.]
