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 1076 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
The £22 million has been made available. As I understand it as cabinet secretary, I think that there was a negotiation between the SFC and the Government regarding how funding could be made available through the budget process. It is very clear that we acted at pace to provide that extra funding—we had to act at pace when the full quantum of job losses became known to the Government. That is why that funding was made available through the budget and it is why I announced the extra funding.
There are ways in which funding can be made available. Part of the funding—the £15 million—came through the budget process, but the other part of it came through £10 million in capital that I announced later. The important point is that the £22 million liquidity ask from the University of Dundee has been fully met and that there have been no further asks since.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
I do not want to speak on behalf of Mr Dey. I reassure Ms Duncan-Glancy that I will take that point away from today’s evidence session and seek to engage directly with the Information Commissioner, particularly on this SSI and how it might be used as a learning point for us in relation to widening access.
As the member knows well, there have been real challenges in that regard. Mr Dey and I met Universities Scotland—I think at the start of this year—to talk about some of those challenges, because we want to have better data sharing. The Information Commissioner’s office has a direct role when there are challenges, and we need to be assured of all that we are doing. That assurance has been given in relation to this SSI. It may be that there is an opportunity to dovetail the approach that we have taken with this SSI in relation to Social Security Scotland and a national approach to widening access. I would be keen to pursue that with his office.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
The budget agreement does not provide for that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
I cannot. I wrote to all local authorities two weeks ago. I have yet to be provided with advice from Ms Meikle; we discussed that earlier. I expect to receive that advice in the coming days. I would be happy to share the advice with the committee when I have it, but it has not yet been presented to me.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
In terms of universality—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
The 25,000 are the extra children whom we anticipate will be captured by the SSI. There are thousands of families who are currently missing out on free school meals for their children, which is not good.
We want all families who should be in receipt of free school meals to have that for their child or young person. The SSI will mean that the data sharing is much better and more granular at a local level, and it will allow local authorities to move at pace in implementing the extra funding that we have provided them with to deliver on that commitment.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
That was confirmed in the parliamentary chamber many months ago.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
Alison, do you want to come in?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
Yes. I share that disappointment.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Jenny Gilruth
Of course we constantly consider those costs. Following that debate, I engaged directly with the Scottish Futures Trust, particularly on the figure of £256 million that was put to us by the trust and was independently analysed.
Mr Ross’s colleague Liam Kerr, who was the education spokesperson at the time, put forward—he might have included it in your party’s motion—a different figure, which we differed on because, as I understand it, it did not include capital costs. I am in constant contact with the SFT about driving down those costs, and I am more than happy to consider other suggestions. Mr Kerr came forward with a suggestion, although I do not think that it was borne out by the facts, because the Government, with its expansive provision and the funding associated with that, has had to spend millions of pounds of capital on building kitchens, which has increased costs, but those costs were not accounted for in the Conservatives’ figure.
Let us go back to the budget negotiations. If the provision of universal free school meals is such a pressing issue for Mr Ross and his party, why was it not part of their budget negotiations?
