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
My reading is that it would depend on the nature of the data sharing involved.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
But there are restrictions on that. My understanding is that people, institutions and organisations can share information with the Government, but there might be an issue with regard to whom the Government can then share that data with. It is a complex landscape—frustratingly so in an instance such as this, in which we all know what we would like to do.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
Indeed. That is why we are looking at a basket of measures. The forum has opened the opportunity for everyone to throw in their ideas from an informed position, and we have had additional input, including from Liam McArthur, relating to rural areas.
Following the experience of the past nine years, we understand better the areas in which the approach has gaps. The question is now how we address them. Data sharing is part of that, but there is more to it. In order to capture more students, some universities use contextual admission policies, but others do not share that practice, which is particularly troubling in rural areas. What do we do in that space? I absolutely get the issue. I offer you the reassurance that we are now much more alive to the full range of challenges and are intent on addressing them.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
Yes, but you will appreciate that, when a report is presented, we take time to analyse it and come to some conclusions. We ran into the purdah period and the recess period. As soon as the parliamentary recess was concluded, we responded to the report.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
Principally, we thought that, because of the focus on the targets, it was important that the commissioner’s continued focus in assisting us was on the university piece. Nevertheless, I understand his argument. I am not going to sit here today and roll that out—that will be an on-going conversation with him. We disagree on that point, but he understands our reasons. That is where we were then, but the position might change in the future.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
The door is not closed. This committee might decide to include the issue in its report, and we will respond to it.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
It is important to understand the context in which all this has been taken forward, which involves genuine collaborative work between the Government, universities and colleges. We have approached the issue from the point of view of accepting that the blunt measure that we currently have represents a barrier, and that there might be something else that we could do. Including free school meals as a measure was suggested as an option by the university sector, particularly by the universities in Aberdeen, where a unique data-sharing arrangement is already in place between the local councils and the two universities, so it made sense to pilot the idea there.
10:45There are difficulties with scaling that up, which the universities have identified. The pilot has, self-evidently, given us a bit of a test bed to look at how it might work in practice. We ought to use free school meals as a measure if we can, notwithstanding the data-sharing issues. We have also looked at the school clothing grant, which was another possibility but, again, we run into data-sharing issues.
As I said, we have come at this from the point of view of asking what the art of the possible is here. There is a strong argument that, although SIMD20 is the driver, universities would benefit from having a basket of measures that they could dip in and out of. We are keen to put as many measures—or tools, if you like—at their disposal in order to achieve what we all want to achieve.
My understanding is that the pilot in the north-east is quite far progressed with regard to moving into the delivery phase. There was a slight delay on the part of one of the councils, but the expectation is that the pilot will be up and running fairly quickly, and that we will probably be in a position to assess its success or otherwise by late autumn, which would give us a sense of how it has worked.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
We must first determine that that is the only route that we could take. None of the bills—given their parameters, taken at face value—would capture that. You will understand the risks of broadening out a bill at the last minute—it is not something that we think is viable.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
I will bring in Clara Pirie on that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Graeme Dey
You said a moment ago that, according to the individual who gave evidence, a lot of that work is now out of date. We would need to take account of that. I was reading a briefing on the findings the other day, and we could certainly base some of the consultation on that. I will take it away and think about reconvening the group. That might feed into the consultation. I am happy to engage further on that.
