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 708 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
It had been thought at one point that that could be done only through primary legislation, but we are trying to exhaust other possibilities that might allow us to do that. I cannot go into too much detail at the moment, but I want to reassure you that we are looking at every possible avenue to be able to deploy those measures.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
We have invested time in considering some of the other measures that have been talked about, such as the child payment and free school meals, but we always come back to the data-sharing restrictions that we face. I wish that it were otherwise, to be honest.
I reassure you that we are constantly considering whether there is some way of making the unique learner number happen. I am happy to continue to update the committee on that, beyond this inquiry.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
I am not sure that I entirely understand the question. That NUSS report said, in essence, that we should put more money into student support. Are you suggesting that there is a way to ensure that it reaches those students who most need it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
Absolutely.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
The table that the Scottish Parliament information centre produced for the committee is clear that pretty much everyone is doing their bit. The commissioner’s ask for individual targets is a good one, because some universities have easily got to where they have got to and can go beyond but, for others, there are additional challenges.
I should have said earlier that we are waiting for a formal response from Universities Scotland, but we understand that the university sector is agreeable to the approach that the commissioner has suggested, and we will be looking to take that forward as quickly as we can.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
There had been extensive discussions with the University of Dundee in particular about its challenges, and directly with the SFC on a regular basis. I met the new—that is, the current—leadership of the university directly several weeks ago. It was appropriate to do so, as they had reached the point where they were beginning to articulate some of the challenges to the staff. Discussions with the University of Dundee were taking place. However, as I have said, the £15 million figure was predicated on a financial transactions underspend—those were the available moneys.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
I did not say that, Mr Rennie. I take you back to what I said earlier about the relationship between the SFC—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
In the first instance, we need to know whether we can introduce this. That is the starting point, and that is what we are working through currently. As I have said to you on a number of occasions, the reason for its not being introduced is not, as some of your witnesses articulated last week, to do with resource and cost. That is not at the forefront of our thinking; our thinking is on how we can get to the point at which it might be possible to introduce the measure, because we absolutely get the merits of it.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
Mr Mason’s point is well made and I understand it. As a constituency MSP, I understand his frustrations.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
The SFC has been doing a piece of work on the sustainability of institutions in order to get that broader picture and to ascertain whether any other institutions are in a similar position to the University of Dundee. I think the SFC has a sense that there are no others, but that is not to say that our institutions are not facing challenges, because it is a UK-wide problem. The most recent figure that I saw was that 70 universities across the UK are implementing cuts of between 10 and 15 per cent in response to those challenges. That piece of work is there.
As I said to the committee before, if there are any lessons to be learned from what has happened at Dundee—a report is being written about how that came about—then there will be an opportunity within the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill to look at governance. Part of that governance may involve enhancing the SFC’s powers in order to improve its oversight, because, essentially, the SFC’s information is only as good as what is reported to it. If there is anything—and I stress the “if”—we are certainly open to looking at how we can better equip the SFC, if that is necessary, to have a clearer picture of what is happening within institutions.
