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 2176 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
How might the principles of good transition be included in the bill? The committee has heard from a number of individuals who highlighted the fact that many councils have decided that care orders will be lifted at the age of 16, which means that the support that will previously have been available to people will no longer be available. As we have heard, that can be very much a cliff edge for someone at the age of 16. I wonder what opportunities the bill presents to look at those principles, and specifically the opportunity to reconsider 16 as the age for lifting compulsory supervision orders. I have concerns that, in many cases, councils have been using that approach to reduce their case load and, ultimately, to save money.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
Will the bill put things on the same legal footing, so that people are entitled to the same support? I find it ridiculous that we are desperate for foster families here in the capital, and we have grandparents who do not necessarily have the financial means to sustain a child. I do not understand why we have not corrected that situation. If the resource is there for fostering, why is it not there at the same level for kinship care? Surely, the priority is for the young person to get the best outcome. Is it because kinship care is on a different legal footing that that has not happened already?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
In the case of someone who goes down that pathway and has their CSO lifted, are you considering including a provision for them to appeal and to then go back to receiving support?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
I look forward to seeing the detail of those options.
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
To ask the Scottish Government when ministers last met with the City of Edinburgh Council to discuss the reported financial pressures facing the capital. (S6O-04491)
Meeting of the Parliament
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
During consideration of the SSI at the Education, Children and Young People Committee, it became clear that Conservative and Labour members of the committee have concerns in relation to the establishment of qualifications Scotland and the power that the instrument gives ministers to make early appointments to the new organisation’s board before Parliament has had the opportunity to deliberate on the Education (Scotland) Bill and decide what the make-up of the board should ultimately be.
As Pam Duncan-Glancy said at the committee, it is odd that we are being asked to vote on an order when we do not yet know the shape of the board that the Government will then be asked to recruit to.
Meeting of the Parliament
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
I absolutely agree. With so many pieces of proposed legislation, the Scottish Government has either been incompetent, as with the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill; has dropped promised legislation, as with the proposed human rights bill and learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill; or has rushed bills through Parliament, and it feels like that is the case with the Education (Scotland) Bill.
Meeting of the Parliament
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
Does the minister accept that the timetabling would work much better if we had the opportunity to get the Parliament’s view at stage 2? We could then see what the board would look like and ministers could progress the work instead of rushing it without taking the Parliament’s view on it at all, as they have done?
Meeting of the Parliament
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Miles Briggs
We want to get this right, which is why it is important that ministers take all members of Parliament with them on this journey. The SQA is transitioning to qualifications Scotland. I do not think that the member could stand up and tell me how many members will be on the board of that new body, because Parliament has not yet decided on that in the legislation. It should be Parliament and not the Government that decides how we progress the issue.
The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills stated—I agree with her on this point—that she does not want the Education (Scotland) Bill to be a Government bill but wants it to be a cross-party, cross-Parliament bill. However, at the first hurdle, the Government has now failed on that test. That is why, at decision time this evening, we will abstain on the SSI.
17:34