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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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
Clare Adamson
I have a final question. As well as the numbers, the costs and the demographics, I am still worried about the intangible links, so I thank Gillian Mackay for opening up that subject. When I was convener of the Education and Skills Committee in the previous parliamentary session, one of the worries was that, given that research funding can be more about the individuals involved than about where the institutions are, a number of EU members of staff would move their research back to Europe as a result of the situation with the horizon programme. The three-year gap and the hostile environment were worries at the time. People were saying, “Why should I stay somewhere I am not welcome?” That was the feeling of a lot of the researchers I spoke to at that time. Did that happen? Was there a loss of staff back to Europe during those three years? What impact has there been on colleges and higher education?
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
Perhaps you could write to us.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Two members still want to come in, but I will ask a quick supplementary question. In relation to the 57 productions that met the criteria for Scotland, if those programmes are sold to networks abroad, is there a proportionate return to BBC Scotland? How is the money divided across the BBC?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Do you want to add something, Ms Burns?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Under our next agenda item, we will take evidence on the BBC’s annual report for 2023-24. We are joined by Tim Davie, director general of the BBC; Hayley Valentine, director of BBC Scotland; and Rhona Burns, finance director, BBC financial planning and insight. I give a warm welcome to you all and invite Mr Davie to make a brief opening statement.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Speaking from my experience, and as a committee convener, I would say that the Parliament’s committees perform a really important scrutiny role. I have privately raised with Mr Davie before that it would be nice to see the committees’ reporting work recognised and published reports highlighted, because reports from cross-party groups and committees in the Parliament can sometimes still be conflated and treated as if they have equal status. We would all agree that, although the reports of cross-party groups are important, they do not have the regular scrutiny and support of parliamentary staff that our reports have.
Mr Kerr has a supplementary question on the topic of local democracy.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
BBC Annual Report
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
I am afraid that Thursday morning committees must finish before chamber business starts, which it will do in 10 minutes, so we will have to draw our discussion to a close. Thank you for that offer of writing to us.
We had some questions about the ombudsman’s comments about diversity, but we have not been able to get to them. If you would indulge us, we will write to you on that issue.
Thank you for your attendance this morning. We look forward to seeing you again over the course of the charter review.
Meeting closed at 11:29.Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Review of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement
Meeting date: 23 January 2025
Clare Adamson
Thank you. Mr Lam, in your submission, you said:
“Facilitating the mobility of contract service suppliers between the EU and UK is a clear priority for the liberalisation of trade in services.”
How do EU service providers view the current mobility arrangements, and can you provide examples of professions where the arrangements are working well and those where the situation is more challenging?
