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 3195 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
I am sure that everybody is very pleased with that—I certainly am. Dare I ask whether your resources are sufficient for what you feel you should be doing? I accept that everybody would like to do more and have more resources, but are you broadly in the right place at the moment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
The counterargument from some schools is that, if a school has a particular religious ethos, the family and the child have the choice as to which school to go to; if they go to a particular school, to some extent, they have to accept the ethos of that school.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
You have mentioned resources generally, and have said that some of your asks—not for yourselves, but for schools, in ASN and other areas—would require more money. Linked to that, there have been a few comments about young people being more involved in budget processes, by which I think you probably mean at local authority level. What do you mean by that? If more resources are required for schools, do you think that there is currently a bit too much for universities? Do you have any ideas about where that money would come from?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
John Mason
We will come back to that next year, then.
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?
