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 2867 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
In your report, you mention religion and belief, and specifically Islamophobia. I understand that the Young Scot “Truth About Youth” survey is due to be published today. Is that correct? You asked Young Scot to ask some questions on that subject in its survey. Will you say a bit about how concerned you are about that and where the concern has come from?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
There will be a lot of different views among young people. Some are religious and some are not. Some follow different religions, and it can lead to practical issues; some would be more concerned than others about boys using girls’ toilets or there being mixed toilets, for example. Are you thinking about going down the route of looking at more practical aspects, or is it just at a high level?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
Would you argue that, if the commissioner had not been in place, children’s rights would be further back and not improving as much as they have been, if at all?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
However, you would not say that there are specific things that have been done, such as there being a lot more schools, because you have been in place. It is more general and vague.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
I have one or two other issues to cover, if you do not mind moving on.
Every year, you meet the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, which questions your budget and so on. We have noticed that your costs are up 20 per cent over three years and that your staffing costs are up 30 per cent over three years. Can you explain why that has happened?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
To give you your due, I think that it is partly because of the existence of your office that everybody is looking for a commissioner; they want to do what you do from their own angle.
You talk about listening to children. I was interested to read page 7 of the report, which says:
“In our strategic plan process, children and young people directed my office to make education reform a priority”.
Is that how it works: you listen to a group of children, they tell you what to do and then you do it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
Having listened to the evidence, I think that this is definitely a move in the right direction. As I understand it, a further 25,000 children will get free school meals who would not otherwise have done so. It appears to me that that will, in fact, reduce stigma, because those 25,000 children will be taken out of being possibly stigmatised. For example, in Glasgow, every child who gets lunch gets a card. That means that, regardless of whether one is paying for one’s lunch, one has the same card. That has been a long-standing thing. It does not completely remove stigma, but it has been a good step in that direction.
We want to do more in this field, and I think that we all agree on that. If, as some parties wanted, we had reduced tax, that would have meant many more children paying for their lunches or just going without lunch altogether, but, thankfully, the Conservatives were defeated on that issue and the budget was agreed to. Obviously, the budget overrides any previous votes that Parliament had, which were non-binding. The SSI is certainly a good move in the right direction, and I am happy to support it.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
Is that discrimination coming exclusively from adults, or is it partly coming from young people?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
In my constituency, there are a large number of Muslim children. The number of Jewish children is smaller, but there is some evidence of Jewish children experiencing some antisemitism.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
Will you pick that up as well, even though the number is small?
