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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 928 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
But we know the time that it takes to secure support from the banks and to put in place the severance package that has been indicated. Surely we are talking about a lost month in which you could have progressed with negotiations to secure the package and get on with relieving some of the pain.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
I am not.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
But my point is—I am sorry to interrupt; please carry on.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
My point is that I think that you are overstating the figures by mentioning “record” lows, as if the data has been collected for centuries, when, in fact, it has been only a few years.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
It is interesting that you have chosen the positive destinations measure and the period from 2010, which is well before the attainment challenge was introduced. The attainment gap has been closing. However, before the attainment challenge was brought in, we see that the gap went from around 13 down to 7 percentage points, which is a drop of 6 points. Since the attainment challenge was brought in, the gap has gone down by only 3 percentage points.
It could be argued that the attainment challenge, and the determined effort by Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney when they were in charge of that portfolio, had less impact on the gap than there was when they were not actually working on it. I am puzzled as to why you have chosen that measurement to sum up the success or failure of the attainment challenge.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
Only for nine years.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
By talking about record levels of improvement, you are implying that that has gone on for decades or centuries when it has been only a few years. I think that you are overstating the point.
I will come to my second point, which may help. Although the figures fluctuate from year to year, they are broadly the same as when we started. I accept the point about the pandemic, but if you look at primary school literacy levels you will see that the gap was in the low 20 percentage points when we first started and it is now in the low 20s. The numeracy gap was in the high teens and is still broadly in the high teens. The secondary school literacy gap at S3 is about 14 percentage points. There is an improvement in the S3 numeracy gap, from 15 to 12 percentage points, but it has not closed completely. To say that those are record numbers is overstating it. It is important that we are honest about the enormous challenges that we still face.
We also need to understand the real impact of the attainment challenge on the system. I would argue that we are nowhere near closing the poverty-related attainment gap or even substantially closing it, given that we are broadly flatlining. To say that we are at record levels is overstating the improvement that we are getting in some limited areas. Do you not accept that?
10:45Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
I will make one point before Mr Gregory comes in—I am sure that he will be helpful. We did some calculations, although they are very crude, as you would expect. To close the S3 literacy gap completely would take 113 years. That is a ridiculous number, but it puts into context the fact that we are, in some areas, making some difference. We are nowhere near closing the gap and we need to be honest with ourselves about that, if we are going to introduce the right measures to tackle the challenge in a much more substantial way. Do you not accept that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
Cabinet secretary, I would like to hear your reaction to yesterday’s decision. Previously, Mr Dey indicated that the door might still be open for further action from the Government, and £15 million of financial transactions has been allocated. I would like to understand whether that position has changed and whether more support will be forthcoming, because the proposed job losses at the University of Dundee are significant. At a fifth of the workforce, they are more than most people would have imagined.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Willie Rennie
That was well before the challenge was brought in.
