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 825 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Bill Kidd
That suits me. Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Bill Kidd
I have another quick question—I say “quick”, because you have covered a degree of it. How do you evaluate early progress in relation to implementation of the UNCRC? You talked a bit about it before, but I want to emphasise the point.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Bill Kidd
Thanks for all the information that you have given us, which is very useful. Why are youth work and third sector organisations—which you have mentioned, and which you deal with a great deal—so important in ensuring that children and young people can be involved in decision making and in helping to improve the services that serve them?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland
Meeting date: 2 April 2025
Bill Kidd
Do you believe that that is working? Are most youth work organisations and groups keen that children should be able to develop the policy direction?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Bill Kidd
Thank you for all your responses so far. I have a couple of questions about the whole family wellbeing fund, but I will first go back to the question that was asked earlier about the delivery of social work support for young people and how they feel about it. As was mentioned, we recently had an online meeting with young people from across the country. One young man raised the fact that he was dissatisfied with the social worker who was dealing with him. That was not because of anything that the social worker did right or wrong but because they were not always available. According to what we were told, the social worker had apparently been unavailable for up to two months, but nobody had been appointed to take their place during that period.
What could that young man or whoever supports him locally do to try to address that problem?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Bill Kidd
That is extremely helpful—thank you. I know that it is difficult, and I am not having a go at social workers, but sometimes situations can cause a difficulty.
To go back to the whole family wellbeing fund, the committee has heard about the need for longer-term funding and funding certainty. We have heard that from those who are involved in delivering whole family support projects. You mentioned this earlier, but what consideration has the Scottish Government given to that and how might it be addressed?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Bill Kidd
Will that also help with regard to the timescales within which people can deliver and, perhaps, transition completely?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Bill Kidd
I understand what you are saying, but will that provide transition support to organisations that are going to continue with the whole family wellbeing fund?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Bill Kidd
Thank you all for being here today. It is very important that we get to hear the outlines of where things have gone. I have a couple of questions about where things are going.
You talked earlier about how the number of international students has been declining. I think that it is the impression of most people that international students are fairly substantial for every university in Scotland and that, without them, there would be long-term difficulties, no matter what has happened so far. Are there any plans to draw more people from the international student body, particularly in the circumstances in which the University of Dundee might not be seen as the first place you might want to go if you are coming from overseas?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Bill Kidd
That makes sense, but you have to ensure that the financial recovery plan is instituted first before you can do that, because you have to make sure that you have something to offer people who want to come and study. The University of Dundee has a long history of being a top-quality learning establishment. You will have to rebuild that to a great degree before you will be able to draw in people, not just from overseas but from here.
