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 1573 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
In trying to understand how you might have succeeded, you will want to know whether you have done so by design—that is, that the outcome was intended. I am the least experienced of the committee members in this area, so I could be completely wrong, but my general impression is that one reason that led to some of the success is the financial incentive for further and higher education institutions to look and compete for students. Therefore, rather than being by design, because universities and colleges really need to get in students in order to get funding, they make themselves much more open to students.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
Is there anything that you can say about that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
For many years, I have advocated that, when somebody joins the armed forces, they should immediately put their name down for housing for when they leave the armed forces, as they are entitled to do. As the minister said, there should be an obligation on the armed forces to look after people, and it could be useful to have a wee discussion at the start of somebody’s armed forces career about what they might want to do in relation to further and higher education. Perhaps the UK Government could respond to that point.
Thank you for answering my question.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
I understand the point about data that is already held, but my objection regarding how we share it remains. Let us be honest—private companies seem to be able to overcome such obstacles, sometimes scrupulously and sometimes not.
There seems to be a consensus that the target should be renewed and refined. If we still remain, after having done that, with a blanket target of 18 or 20 per cent, whatever its basis, is not there a risk that we could achieve or exceed the target but still have pockets—as we heard last week, the situation is very uneven across the country—where people who would really benefit from widened access do not, which the blanket target would obscure?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
Implicit in that, is the idea simply that moving to the free school meals measure would not necessarily give you enough refinement?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
I am conscious that, at the start of the evidence session, there were a lot of positive comments. For example, you said that the target is very ambitious and that we exceeded it early on but then there was a bit of slippage. However, there is substantial confidence that you are back on track, and the early indications are that things are looking good.
Inevitably, and not unreasonably, the committee has focused on some of the challenges and issues. It is important to learn from success, but we often just rush past that in Scotland. However, if you do not understand how you have been successful, you are missing valuable information. Has any work been done to identify how you have managed to succeed to the extent that you have so far?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
First, as one of its graduates, I should say that the University of Dundee—along with the University of Stirling, which I represent—is the best university in Scotland.
Secondly, there is a real tension here between, on the one hand, autonomy, and on the other hand, the responsibility of the taxpayer to bail out universities that find themselves in difficulty. From what you are saying, minister, I take it that you are edging towards the idea that there might be a need, through the SFC, to move a bit towards safeguarding the taxpayer’s interest in relation to that tension. The matter is not helped by the fact that many politicians and a number of the institutions themselves blur the lines—they will assert their autonomy but, at the same time, expect the taxpayer to bail them out.
I am not saying that this is the case in relation to the University of Dundee or any other university, but it cannot be the case that the taxpayer must always be hit if finances at a university are badly managed. When you talked about governance and the SFC, were you hinting at a greater protection of the taxpayer in all of that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
I am not questioning that. I perfectly understand the greater economic benefit that an institution such as the University of Dundee—I am not focusing particularly on it—can have and why you would want to see those universities and institutions protected. My point is about balancing the interests of the taxpayer with the perceived real autonomy of institutions. It is a very difficult balance to strike. In what you said about the SFC perhaps taking a greater role in relation to governance, were you recognising that tension?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
I confess that, when I bumped into Mr Dey outside the chamber yesterday, I asked him the question.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Keith Brown
Apart from large tracts in rural areas where there are SIMD20 pockets, we also miss semi-rural areas—such as Alloa, in my constituency—which have levels of deprivation that exceed those in many parts of Glasgow, but do not have the same opportunities.
11:30