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 1484 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
This is absolutely the norm for this process.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
The purpose of the order is transition. We can assume that at least some of the SQA board members will transition to the new board. I am conscious that, in the intervening period, members of the current SQA board might step down or decide to step away from the organisation. Would you have any concerns that, without clarity on the process, we could end up with vacancies on the SQA board that would be harder to fill because people would be reluctant to step forward, because they are unsure about the status of their position on the board as it transitions to the new organisation and, I imagine, they would not want to end up in an unregulated appointment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
Given that I have called for years for the SQA board to be reformed, I want to quickly put on the record my thanks to the current chair of the SQA. I think that it is a significant improvement that we have moved away from a situation in which, just over a year ago, there was only one teacher on the board of our national qualifications authority and three management consultants. Although expertise in management is important, the balance was not right. The recent appointment of qualified teachers and lecturers is already improving the organisation.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
Very briefly, as Miles Briggs said, there has been a significant increase in access to in-school mental health counselling, which is positive. The six-monthly reports show some good data in that regard, and the demand that was always there is now finally being met. However, I noticed that the most recent report shows that twice as many girls and young women as boys and young men are accessing mental health support in schools. I realise that this is quite a specific question and that you might not already be aware of the issue, but is that something that the Government is looking into? We are not going to get a ratio bang on 50:50, but it is quite striking that the ratio is 2:1.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
Much appreciated; thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
If you can provide an update to the committee after that meeting—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
Yes. That would be very helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
Nico McKenzie-Juetten mentioned a moment ago, and you have just repeated it, cabinet secretary, that this is a routine process and the alternative would be a truncated process. You do not have cross-Government responsibility for board appointments, but are you aware of any situations in which the truncated process has been followed? If this is the norm and we are just following the regular process, are you aware of any examples where that has not been done and the truncated process has had to be followed?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
Excellent. That is good to hear.
I am also interested in attendance, which Miles Briggs raised. I am aware that the Children’s Commissioner for England has done a lot of positive work on attendance. Is there anything that we can learn from that? The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland has had other areas of focus recently, quite legitimately, but some really good work on the subject appears to have taken place in England. I wonder what we could draw from that, given that it is an acute issue but also very much a shared issue, and not just in Scotland and England—it is a wider western problem.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Ross Greer
My question is more about how money is spent across Government, rather than the specific debate that you and I have had before about the value of campus cops. Whether SAC funding needs to be used for that purpose is a legitimate question because, putting aside my views on campus cops, could Police Scotland’s budget not be used to directly fund them, given that police officers are being funded?
