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 2278 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Douglas Ross
I have experienced both systems. We must be careful that we do not just say, “Westminster has elected conveners and they seem to have more authority down there,” or, “Westminster has bill committees,” and so on. It is a very different situation. Westminster has far more members—650 compared to our 129.
There would be merit in dividing the two types of business but retaining the same expertise. One of the earlier questions—I do not know whether it was from Rona Mackay or the convener—was whether committees should meet more. Bar Ash Regan, I think that we all agreed that they should. Perhaps the subject committees would meet as normal and then, as legislation came along, they would meet separately. They would still meet and do their normal work on a Wednesday morning, but they would meet additionally that week in order to do bill consideration. When the bill was done, they could go back to meeting once a week. The benefit of that, and why the Westminster system is better, would be that committees could be far more agile and reflective of what was happening at the time.
Many times, the Education, Children and Young People Committee—other Conservative-convened committees have this issue, too—has wanted to get into topical issues, but, because we have bills to get through, there is simply no time for that. When the committees are addressing issues within a week or two of them becoming big issues, the public are interested in what we are doing. At the moment, there is very little interest in what the committees are doing, despite our very good work, because we tend to get bogged down with legislation and are not dealing with the topical issues of the day that are being discussed.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Douglas Ross
I will try to take that advice by answering in one or two sentences. We are here to scrutinise Government legislation and Government ministers and to look at the topical issues of the day. If we do all three things, we will perform well as committees.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Committee Effectiveness Inquiry
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Douglas Ross
That is the point I am coming on to. First, as Ross Greer has suggested, no one is predicting the next election, but Parliament could end up having a number of smaller parties. Therefore, if we introduced elected conveners, the Parliament could be electing from a choice of one, because some conveners will be from smaller parties that might have only one member on a committee.
The reason why I can confidently say no, no and no to your three questions is because I had some fears about joining a committee that I had no experience of as the convener. I had never done much on education in my time; when I was previously in the Scottish Parliament, I was on the Justice Committee. I felt that I was coming in as a former party leader who did not know any of the other members.
However, although we have had quite strong and robust differences on the committee, I do not feel that, just because I was not elected in a vote in the chamber, my authority as convener in working with committee members has been diminished in any way. The committee members accept that, for the education committee and three other committees, the convener will be a Conservative member, and they will work with the convener to do their job. They are less interested in the convener if they are able to do what they want to and ask the questions that they want to. I do not think that having a vote in the chamber on a convener would change how any of our committee members work, either on their own or combined as a committee.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Douglas Ross
Should there be?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Douglas Ross
Do you think that there is a wide enough awareness among employers and others that someone who achieves a college qualification now has been through potentially quite significant classroom and workshop learning in comparison with what would have happened five years ago?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Douglas Ross
Is it a small amount? Is it significant?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Douglas Ross
You spoke about the quality of the service that learners receive. Are learners in Scotland’s colleges being taught less in the classroom or in workshops because your budgets are being cut?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Douglas Ross
I should declare, for the sake of balance on the committee, that other apprenticeships are available. You might be superstars, but there might be other superstars, too.
I call John Mason.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Douglas Ross
And that goes back to the schools not doing enough to promote the option.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Douglas Ross
We have heard the opposite and that, certainly in previous years, demand for apprenticeships has far outstripped supply. You are saying that that has changed now.
