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 1425 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges (Financial Sustainability)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Miles Briggs
I want to pick up on some of Angela Cox‘s comments, because it is important to look at other funding models. I do not have the figures to hand, but I think that Ayrshire College has attracted around 40 per cent of all private sector investment into the college sector. That probably relates to the partnership with Prestwick airport. There is a great opportunity for the sector to build relationships, through which a different model could be developed.
We see the pressures that the education sector, especially the university sector, faces at the moment, and money is not available from the Government. Where do the panel members feel that there could be a different funding model? The sector obviously sits within the education portfolio, but would the economic development portfolio be more appropriate? We must think more radically about where the college sector needs to be regarding its parity of esteem with the university sector, and not have a situation where 100,000 places have been lost and it is seen as the poor relation. My conclusion is that after 18 years, that is what has happened.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
The committee has heard consistently about the skills gap in our economy and the need to do something different about it, especially in relation to the net zero agenda. Many companies are saying that they want to be part of funding that. Is there a new opportunity—a new funding model that ministers will look to—to increase the number of credits that are available in Scotland directly to fund those skill gaps?
Several issues with that have not really been addressed in recent times. We know from the recent conference that was held in the Highlands and Islands that there is a huge gap in the workforce, which will not be filled overnight.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
Good morning to the ministers and their officials. I am trying to think what the collective noun for a group of ministers is—maybe I will go with “gaggle”.
I have a number of wide-ranging questions, the first of which is about rural schools. There has been a decrease of 136 in the number of rural schools. What impact assessment have ministers made of that? The First Minister agreed in April to review the mothballing guidance for schools and nurseries. When will that review be published?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
Would ministers look at reviewing the allocation of credits as part of that? I am thinking about the college sector. I recently met North East Scotland College and discussed the fantastic new net zero campus that it will open. It will have no new credits, so it will have to look towards all its provision. It seems a bit ridiculous that that could impact on other courses in a growing sector, particularly given that the Scottish Government is saying that that is one that we should be doing more to recruit students into.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
Thank you, I understand that a ministerial reshuffle is going on, so I wish you all well after this meeting.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
Thank you for that answer. I want to return to an issue that I have raised with the Minister for Housing and with other ministers: the number of children who are living in temporary accommodation and the delivery of education for them. Under this Government, 10,360 homeless children are living in temporary accommodation. Here in the capital, there are 3,127 such children. I have consistently raised the issue of children moving schools when they are in temporary accommodation and have asked for a presumption against pupils being moved between schools. I understand that that was meant to be discussed in the ministerial oversight group on homelessness—that is what I was last told, on 4 March. Where is the Government on that policy? Will you update the committee on that? Little progress seems to have been made over a long period.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
I also want to touch on VAT on the independent school sector. That is something that I have raised many times with the cabinet secretary and in various letters to His Majesty’s Treasury. What assessment has the Scottish Government made of that policy’s impact to date, and when did the cabinet secretary last meet representatives from the sector?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
Do you expect the review to be published before the recess?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
As we have heard, teacher numbers fell by 598 last year. Can you confirm to the committee that the Scottish Government will now not meet its pledge to recruit 3,500 additional teachers?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Education and Skills
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Miles Briggs
My next question returns to the free school meals issue. It is important to look at the situation in the round. Having ditched the pledge, the Scottish Government has re-adapted it in recent years. However, a Sunday Mail freedom of information investigation has reported that families whose children are not eligible for free school meals are facing a 20 per cent increase in the cost of school meals. In relation to the cost of the school day, what have the Scottish Government and COSLA done to engage with parents who are not entitled to free school meals in relation to the additional cost that they face?
