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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 1446 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
The cabinet secretary mentioned the potential challenge if a trade unionist who is also a teacher is on the board. However, the reality is that a number of teachers are members of trade unions. When it comes to conflicts of interest, the amendment explicitly sets out, as I did at the start, that any interest would be declared and taken into account in the decision making.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
Would the member take a short intervention?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
My apologies. Paragraphs (c)(ii) and (iii) in amendment 221 are alternatives, rather than provisions that build on each other. There is an “or” after the word “qualifications”.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
Your proposal in amendment 120 defines “children and young people” as
“persons under the age of 18.”
In Scots law, the rule is that, if you are under 18, you are a child. Is there not a danger that we would create a contradiction between a child and a young person and that, by doing so, we would potentially exclude either a young person and/or a child by attaching the definition of both “child” and “young person” to being under 18?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
On the concept of building partnerships, you have already given us a lot of examples of how successfully the Scottish Parliament reaches out to different groups, which is one of the things that we can be very proud of in the Parliament. There will always be more to do to give the public confidence about where they fit in, but do you have any comments about the cultural precursors that are needed for effective scrutiny? It goes back to my earlier point about committee remits. What makes a committee really work well with regard to scrutiny? In simple terms, is it the written-down procedures and the set of questions that are going to be asked or, actually, is it a cultural connection within a committee that brings it together? I know that it is not one or the other; it is a balance, but it is about where the balance lies.
Who wants to come in first? I am looking across the room—this takes me back to being a primary school teacher. [Laughter.] Excellent, Ken—I will come to you.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
Also, sometimes, no feedback is given to the public about why nothing happened.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
It is fair to say that there is evidence of that happening—certainly at Westminster—but procedures are in place that result in conveners changing. A loop of protection is in place in other Parliaments, which works, and there is confidence that there are ways of preventing the issue getting out of control. However, no one describes what the issue is—it is a bit like sausage making and laws, is it not?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
I want to go back to rapporteurs and their role, because they were mentioned earlier. In other parliaments around the world, that role is far more developed than it is here. As was said, a rapporteur is, in essence, an individual who takes responsibility for looking at something in depth, beyond the time that the committee has to do such work, and then—surprise, surprise—reports back to the committee. Is the rapporteur role better suited to committees’ own inquiries or should it form part of scrutiny—or is it something that fits depending on the question that is being asked?
Cristina Leston-Bandeira, may I put that to you first? You have an awareness of the role of rapporteurs in other places.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
Yes, it does, and it prompts another question. In fulfilling that role, does a rapporteur square the circle of the tension that you talked about, Ken, in that a committee that is scrutinising a bill cannot be seen to have assisted in drafting it? I am putting committee bills aside for the moment. Would that help to keep the dynamic workable and justifiable to the Scottish public?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 3 April 2025
Martin Whitfield
Would that be more limited than only pre-legislative scrutiny? Or, as Cristina Leston-Bandeira pointed out, could it be used elsewhere, provided that the committee is separated from the reporter, who is always identified as such and takes a different stance in decision making?
