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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 2800 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
So you are confirming that the money will not be taken out of the college budget and sent off to support mental health services in the NHS, for example.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
Of course.
I call Liam Kerr.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
I draw your attention, minister, to the Official Report from 5 June, which might be the evidence session of interest to you. At that meeting, Dr Conlon of London Economics said that, compared with England and Wales, there is a funding shortfall of about £1,500 per student in Scotland, and that the current system of fees benefits those with middle-to-higher incomes.
Could I bring in—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
Good morning, and welcome to the 22nd meeting in 2024 of the Education, Children and Young People Committee.
We have apologies from Stephanie Callaghan, and I welcome Stuart McMillan as a committee substitute.
The first item on our agenda is our final pre-budget scrutiny evidence session. I welcome our witnesses, who are Graeme Dey, the Minister for Higher and Further Education and Minister for Veterans; and Stuart Greig, the head of the governance and assurance division in the Scottish Government’s lifelong learning and skills directorate.
We have no opening statement to hear and will move straight to members’ questions. John Mason will kick us off.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
We had a bit of a head-to-head last year, if you remember, regarding your £56 million of savings from demand-led programmes in last year’s budget. In January this year, you did not rule out the prospect of in-year pressures on the budget. I have your wording here. You said that “external factors” meant that you could not rule out more in-year cuts. What update can you provide the committee with today regarding in-year cuts to education spending?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
I would like to bring in Stuart McMillan with a supplementary question first and see how that goes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
We had a very interesting, broad-ranging discussion. A lot of evidence and data had been collected.
I have a list of members wishing to contribute. John Mason is next, followed by Willie Rennie.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
I will now move to questions from my deputy convener, Evelyn Tweed.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
People forget that you are also responsible for setting the budgets for our youth programmes. Earlier this week, I had a meeting with YouthLink Scotland, which was concerned that its grant for 2024-25 has not been agreed. What are your thoughts in the light of the current spending cuts? As minister, are you looking to protect the provision of universal youth work services across Scotland? We know how key that is to community cohesion, which we heard so much about yesterday in the chamber.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 4 September 2024
Sue Webber
Perhaps I should declare that I am a former girl guide and my father was a Boys Brigade captain, as the First Minister was. I have a bit of a penchant for the uniformed organisations across Scotland. I am sure that many MSPs are ex-guides, ex-brownies or ex-scouts. A few hands are going up.