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 1182 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I recognise what the cabinet secretary said about the origin and trying to avoid a political debate. We heard some of that rehearsed earlier when the convener asked his questions. However, does the cabinet secretary recognise that her party has been the governing party for 19 years and that there has been a substantial increase to the Scottish budget, particularly in the last two budget cycles at the UK level? Does she recognise that the forecast of the resource that will be allocated to education is deeply concerning? Does that forthcoming spend not suggest that this Government, in the last months of the current session of Parliament, is deprioritising education?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
In response to a topical question last week or the week before, the cabinet secretary told me that PEF should not be used to plug existing gaps. We heard from Mr Watson about trying to future proof and mainline some of that preventative spend. Does she recognise that those SFC projections for council budgets will inevitably lead to issues such as PEF being used to plug gaps?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
I absolutely recognise a lot of that, but the Scottish Fiscal Commission suggests that council funding is going to drop for many of the services to which the cabinet secretary refers. I have heard her say before that schools are required to do a lot of the scaffolding. If you are going to cut health and social care partnership budgets, social work and other support that sits around that, you will not be able to fill the gap in schools. There seems to be a lack of focus on the reductions to local authority budgets, which will inevitably have an impact.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
That is not what we hear from local authorities.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Good morning. I will start with some of the themes that have previously been raised—in particular, the international comparison. When Professor Powell last appeared before the committee, he stated that there was a desire to have 1 per cent of the international student market, which is around 700 students. I am keen to understand how many international students were recruited this year.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
You recognise that 1 per cent figure that you had shared. Is that still the aspiration?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
That was very helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Are you able to say from which countries, predominantly, you have recruited the 80 students?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
Would anyone else on the panel like to make a contribution to this point? We heard about the island of Ireland, both north and south, and the investment that is being made there in rural education. The Government of Ireland has just announced €4.5 million for a distributed campus support fund to balance the regional issues that we have heard about this morning.
Should Scotland learn from that with regard to how we support the communities where there has been disinvestment from SRUC in campuses? I appreciate that it might be too little, too late, but it would be useful to get your sense about whether the Government should look across the water to what is happening in Ireland.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scotland’s Rural College
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Paul O'Kane
That would be helpful. On the point that you made about internal recruitment from within the other nations of the United Kingdom, do you recognise the challenge in relation to Northern Ireland’s rural colleges? The Greenmount campus in County Antrim is receiving £32 million for redevelopment, and Loughry campus in County Tyrone has a £43 million investment. Do you recognise that that investment—from the Northern Ireland Executive and those colleges in partnership—will be a challenge when you are trying to attract students who would normally come from our closest neighbours?
