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 2221 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Does the committee wish to highlight its correspondence with the Scottish Government to the lead committee in respect of the matters that are discussed in questions 1 and 2?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Does the committee wish to note that the Scottish Government has advised that it will take action to correct the points that are raised in questions 3, 5, 7, 8 and 9?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Does the committee wish to highlight its correspondence with the Government to the lead committee, and is the committee otherwise content with the instrument?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments not subject to Parliamentary Procedure
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Under agenda item 4, we are considering two instruments, on which no points have been raised.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
I acknowledge that point about the additional sources of funding as well as the point that you raised, Ms Anderson. However, at the very beginning of this meeting, in response to the convener’s questioning, both the Scottish Government and COSLA said that they agreed with the recommendations in the briefing. With that on the record, I would expect local authority areas with a higher level of deprivation and more children with additional support needs to start to get additional resource to help them to deliver the services that are required to help those children and their families.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Paragraphs 46 to 55 and 59 and 60 of the briefing are interesting with regard to looking ahead and trying to deal with some of the challenges. As I said at the outset, I acknowledge that this area is hugely complex. Every child is different, so trying to do something that broad is very much a challenge.
The briefing mentions the situation with teacher training in ASL and the Scottish Government’s commitment to considering options in that regard. I am keen to understand where the Scottish Government is on the issue of additional training. We have heard that the number of pupil support assistants has increased to 17,046, and that additional training is very much required.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
I will certainly be in touch with you, Laura, and I will speak to the convener of the cross-party group.
The deputy convener touched on the presumption in favour of mainstreaming. That issue has come up regularly in some of my work with parents. I undertook a survey, which was completed at the end of April. This is the first bit of information on the survey that I will put into the public domain, and I will get back to everyone who responded to it. We asked a question about the presumption of mainstreaming. A total of 29.49 per cent support it, while 70.51 per cent think that it is now past its sell-by date and want to do something different.
As the briefing indicates, there has been an increase of nearly 800 per cent in the number of ASL pupils since the 2004 act came into effect, and I have heard in various fora that the presumption of mainstreaming should be looked at again, potentially.
Has any work has been undertaken or has anything been looked at in that regard?
11:15Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Okay. When I was on the Education, Children and Young People Committee, I was involved in the production of its previous report. I am also the deputy chair of the cross-party group on dyslexia and the chair of the cross-party group on visual impairment. Through that experience and through this piece of work, and in the engagement that I have had with parents, particularly in the past 12 months, I have reflected a great deal on young people who I went to school with and all the people who I have met in my community who were failed by the so-called “world-class” education system that Scotland had in the past.
Some of the strongest testimonies that I have heard are from people who have dyslexia. There has been a great deal of improvement in helping young people with dyslexia, but there are still challenges in certain areas. Some people still do not want to recognise that dyslexia is a thing and that it exists. I encourage the Scottish Government and COSLA, when undertaking the work that they are doing and when they engage with unions and others, to recognise that that aspect is hugely important. I have an example in my mind from just the past couple of years of somebody who had to move their child from one primary school to a different one because of the lack of acceptance of dyslexia.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Thank you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
That is very helpful. Colin Beattie cited East Lothian Council, which has a table setting out the range of reasons for additional support need provision. It would be helpful to have a consistent approach across the country, using that as an example. I am not saying that there is not a consistent approach, because I do not know whether that is the case. However, having a consistent approach to categorisation might assist with planning and considering different policies.
Earlier, Mr Rennick mentioned English as a second language in Glasgow. Clearly, that will not be an issue in other parts of the country. There will be spikes in needs, depending on the situation. However, a consistent approach to categorisation would certainly help with any future activity and planning.
