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 1469 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
Clare Adamson
We had a private briefing with officials before the session today. Although I cannot hold the Government to this, it indicated that it hoped to report on SEEP by the end of the summer. I hope that it is helpful for me to highlight that. However, a week is a long time in politics, so I will leave it there.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Good morning, and welcome to the fourth meeting in 2025 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. We have received apologies from Keith Brown, Patrick Harvie and Stephen Kerr. Jackie Dunbar will substitute for Keith Brown, and Gillian Mackay will substitute for Patrick Harvie. Welcome back, Ms Dunbar and Ms Mackay.
Our first agenda item is a continuation of our evidence taking in the second phase of our inquiry into the review of the European Union-United Kingdom trade and co-operation agreement, focusing on youth mobility.
We are delighted to be joined by Lesley Jackson, who is deputy director of policy, Universities Scotland; Roy Gardner, who is vice principal, corporate development and innovation, City of Glasgow College and is also representing Colleges Scotland; and Sarah Paterson, who is communications and public affairs manager, YouthLink Scotland. We are also joined online by Sai Shraddha S Viswanathan, who is the president of National Union of Students Scotland.
I will start with a few questions and then bring in the other members of the committee.
The first question is for Ms Paterson. I was very taken by your written submission, particularly the many quotes from the youth work sector. One of them was from Colin MacFarlane from YMCA Scotland, who said:
“While digital technology has enabled easier access to people internationally, the ability to learn face to face and experience other cultures and environments is invaluable.”
You state that you are “hugely” disappointed that,
“Despite the transformative impact of international youth work”,
you feel that the sector has been overlooked in the development of the wider UK programmes and the possibilities going forward.
Can you say a little more about your thoughts on that area and what you would like to see?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
I would still like to get to the issue of the charter and diversity, if possible. Gillian Mackay and Mr Kerr can ask supplementary questions, but they will have to be quite small.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
I will just interject at this point, and this will have to be the final question.
In December, Stephanie Peacock announced that there will be a review of the charter, and this Parliament has a statutory duty to be part of the consultation on that. Do you have any requirements around the things that you will be focusing on in the charter review?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Good morning, and welcome to the third meeting in 2025 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. We have received apologies from Keith Brown and Patrick Harvie. Jackie Dunbar, who will be joining us shortly, will substitute for Keith Brown, and Gillian Mackay will substitute for Patrick Harvie. I give a warm welcome to everyone.
Our first agenda item is a continuation of our evidence taking in the second phase of our inquiry into the review of the European Union-United Kingdom trade and co-operation agreement, focusing on trade in services. This week, we are looking at the European perspective and we are joined online by Christophe Lam, who is a junior adviser at BusinessEurope; and Pascal Kerneis, who is the managing director of the European Services Forum. I welcome them both.
I will start with a couple of questions, the first one of which is for Mr Kerneis—I hope that I have pronounced your name properly; please correct me if I have not.
Your paper suggests that data flow and data protection are vital issues, particularly for the information technology sector and consultancy services. Could you elaborate on your concerns?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Mr Lam, do you have a view on that?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
If the current arrangement is not renewed, what would be the process of accrediting a British company as being of a standard that would enable it to be allowed to trade? Would that involve something like the equivalent of the British Standards Institution ISO 9001 system? Have you any idea how that might be accomplished?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
That was very helpful, too.
I see no indication that the committee has any further questions, so I thank you both for appearing at this morning’s meeting and for contributing to our TCA inquiry. Again, I thank you for your written submissions.
I will now pause for a five-minute comfort break while we allow the panels to change over.
09:44 Meeting suspended.10:08&Բ;&Բ;ܳԲ—&Բ;&Բ;
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Thank you for that opening statement and for mentioning some of the highlights. It would be remiss of me not to say that I am really looking forward to the coverage of Celtic Connections, as a local festival—indeed, I will attend “The Quay Sessions” on Saturday night, which I am looking forward to.
In a speech to BBC staff in May 2022, you emphasised your support for the local democracy reporting service, despite the funding challenges,
“and putting compelling local storytelling at the heart of iPlayer, Sounds and News”.
Three years on, how are you managing to balance the provision of that support with the need to deal with the funding challenges? Do you have any comments to make on the coverage of this Parliament, for example, in local news and TV news reporting?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Perhaps you could write to us.
