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
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Ross Greer
Sticking with the same theme, I am interested in how the data intersects. As things stand, students from an SIMD20 background who are disabled are doubly marginalised in the system. How do you handle that data without duplicating it in separate silos, whereby we have one report on the access rate of disabled students and another on the access rate of students from an SIMD20 background? How do you make sure that an intersectional approach is taken, such that a broader overview can be taken of how the various marginalisation factors overlap with one another and what the impact is?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Ross Greer
I assume that this would require ministerial direction, but have there been any discussions between the SFC and Corseford College about whether it could become a funded institution?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Ross Greer
Conveniently, the Scottish Government is in next, so we can ask it that question.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Ross Greer
I absolutely take the point about the need for the review and the need to gather evidence. Regardless of the outcome of the review—whether it is that the Corseford model works or that a different one is required—there is an obvious need. Would the Government prefer that that need be met by provision that is funded through the regular SFC funding model—that is, by a recognised SFC-funded institution?
Corseford would say that the funding arrangements that it has are not ideal. There are funding pots coming from various directions and there is a lack of certainty about funding. I give credit to the Liberal Democrats for securing the funding for the coming year, but we should not need to look at it year on year, which happens because the college is separate from regularly SFC-funded institutions. Is the goal to mainstream it into the SFC funding model?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Ross Greer
Fair enough. Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Ross Greer
Obviously that process has not yet been carried out, but am I correct, and being fair, in concluding from what you are saying that part of the issue was the point at which you were informed by the institution of the challenges that it was facing, and that perhaps it would have been useful if you had been alerted far earlier?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ross Greer
I will start with questions on specifics. You might have to add the answers to the list of details to come back to the committee with, if that is okay.
First, on support for bus services, I note that there is a £5 million reduction in that budget line, but I could not find a narrative explanation for that. I was a bit surprised, given that bus services in Scotland continue to decline and we lose routes regularly. Was that money reallocated on the basis of there being a lack of demand for that support, or was it reallocated because there was a need to cover costs elsewhere in the transport portfolio? I am thinking about the increase in concessionary travel costs, for example.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ross Greer
I am sorry to interrupt, but my understanding is that the support for bus services budget line is to support operators to run routes, which is distinct from covering the costs of concessionary travel. The support for services budget line has gone down by £5 million while services are being lost, so I wonder whether that is because operators did not want that support—because they wanted to end services—or because the money needed to be moved into, for example, the concessionary travel budget line.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ross Greer
I understand that this is not part of any of your portfolios, but, given that just under £30 million, I think, has had to go into concessionary travel again, and given that that has been pretty consistent year on year, it might be worth interrogating Transport Scotland’s methodology. If it is a consistent in-year allocation, it might just be a case of adjusting the methodology and allocating the money better at the start of the year.
Going back to the SQA increase that the convener mentioned, I note, minister, that you indicated that the Government is looking into that. Again, this is a recurring story. Can you share with us what you mean by “looking into that”? Is a specific exercise under way?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 4 March 2025
Ross Greer
That would be great.
My second question is somewhat related to that, because it is on the costs of concessionary travel. To some extent, we are in the early stages of the under-22 concessionary travel scheme. It has been in operation for only a couple of years and we are still learning about the demand. It has been pretty consistent, year on year, that we have needed an in-year allocation to that budget line to cover the costs of the scheme, because demand has been higher than expected. Given that that has been the case for a couple of years in a row, as far as I recall, what work is being done to re-evaluate the methodology for projecting demand for concessionary travel? It seems that we have been pretty consistently underestimating it.
