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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 902 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
George Adam
That brings me to some of Kate Sanger’s evidence. Suzi Martin already knows about this because I have cried on her shoulder about it with regard to my two autistic grandchildren. You brought up how you deal with it on a one-to-one basis with the teachers. It is about basic humanity. I have seen my daughter in these situations, where the two children are absolutely screaming the place down and she just talks to them quietly and deals with it. Surely, in reality teachers also do that because, as you say, it is the human thing to do.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
George Adam
Does anyone else have anything to add?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
George Adam
I know that everybody else wants to say something, but I have an addendum to what I have asked. Let us look at it from the point of view of a lawyer. What if, after the bill becomes law, there is an incident and a parent ends up saying, “That was over the top. I’m going to go to a lawyer”? If the definition is that broad, all kinds of things could happen when the law is tested in court. It is quite concerning. I am sorry; I am just gibbering now. Nicola Killean, did you want to add something?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
George Adam
It was not in connection with the convener, right enough.
I am at a different stage of the parenthood malarkey from the convener, because I am a grandparent now, but my experience was the same as the convener’s: the kids get a sniffle and the school is on the phone to you. I find it difficult to think that restraint and seclusion are happening and going unnoticed. I am shocked, because my daughter complains about how often the school is on the phone and sending kids home. Suzi, is this connected with the lack of data that you mentioned? You said that it is an invisible problem. How would you get the data that you talked about, to deal with the issue?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
George Adam
The definition is quite broad, however. Surely it needs to be tightened.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
George Adam
What you have all said makes more sense to me than what the bill says, which is that restriction is
“anything done by a member of the staff of an education provider with the intention of restricting the physical movement of a child or young person”.
That is all it says, but you are saying that restriction is stopping someone from doing something that they want to do. That might be a better explanation.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
George Adam
Good morning. I will start with Alison Nolan first. As we all know, all roads lead to Paisley, and your submission mentions the increased uptake of services at the Paisley central library since it was put right in the middle of the high street, which is an example of culture being used as a regeneration tool for our high streets. More than 115,000 people visited the library in its first year on that site, and they would not otherwise have gone there, which shows that culture can be used to increase footfall in an area.
You talked about this to a certain degree earlier. Is it up to local authorities to have such ideas and commit to pushing them forward? In Paisley, we have the museum at the top end of the high street, the library right smack in the middle, and Paisley town hall—which is now a venue, after money was spent on converting it—at the bottom end. Basically, Renfrewshire Council is using culture as a regeneration tool to make sure that everybody else comes into town. It creates footfall, which gives people a reason to have a shop or whatever in Paisley town centre.
Is that an example of what you were talking about earlier? Perhaps you can give some more detail on how that approach could be used elsewhere, too.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
George Adam
Of course, it would again be local authorities that would make the decision, so it would be about how they value—
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
George Adam
It was in the submission. I was just following the evidence. [Laughter.]
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 18 September 2025
George Adam
My next question is on the visitor levy. Everyone has mentioned getting access to it—we have already spent any potential money from that about three times over today. If, hypothetically, a proportion of visitor levy could be used, how would your organisations invest it, what would you do with it, and what outcomes would fit with what the Scottish Government is looking for?
