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 2465 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
John Mason
Do you think that the falling number is because of finance, in that people cannot afford to become foster carers? Is there too much bureaucracy? Is it a mixture of things?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
John Mason
Kinship care has a much higher profile than it used to have, which is a good thing. Is there a sense that more kids are now in kinship care, and that fewer therefore need foster care, or are the two not related?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
John Mason
Minister, to go back to Jackie Dunbar’s question, do you feel that whole-family support is consistent across the country? For example, there is a school in my area that has a number of pupils whose families do not have a close relationship with it, and it has used pupil equity funding to bring in the third sector to build up those relationships. Obviously, social work is involved, too, with social workers sometimes taking a child out of class because they need to speak to them about whatever. Do you feel that the national approach is joined up enough, or is it better to leave it to those who are involved in individual situations to provide whole family support in the way that they think is best?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
John Mason
I will move on to the subject of foster care and foster families. I have always had huge admiration for foster care and feel that it has been useful and successful, although I know that there has been the odd mishap along the way. When I was a councillor—which, I am afraid, is now about 20 years ago—Glasgow struggled to get enough foster families. There was a financial side to that and, sometimes, when a family could be found, that family was quite a long way away, which also became an issue.
What is your overall thinking about foster care and foster families? I understand that numbers are down from around 3,500 in 2020 to fewer than 3,000 in 2023. Do we have a big challenge there? What is happening?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
John Mason
One issue with foster caring in the past was that we did not have a lot of ethnic minority families doing it. Has that changed?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
John Mason
If somebody has a relationship with a foster family or kinship carer, that might continue no matter what age they are, and I know that it has in some cases. On Monday night, some committee members met online with young care-experienced people of a variety of ages. In the group that I was in with Pam Duncan-Glancy, one of the issues that came up was the cut-off at 26. A lot of foster families and kinship care arrangements would not have a sharp cut-off at 26, but other parts of the care sector might. Can we address that, or does there have to be an age where we draw the line?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
The Promise
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
John Mason
I accept that PEF is not exactly in your remit, minister, but the good thing about it is that it allows the local headteacher to focus resources where they feel that those are most needed. Would you like to see the approach of focusing resources on the neediest areas continue?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
John Mason
Okay. I saw one amount in particular—a spin-out of £40 million, which was being held separately. Is that correct? It was included in the £74 million, but it was going to be used for strategic investment. Has that £40 million been used, or is it still there?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
John Mason
Can you say anything about what Ernst & Young said, or is that confidential?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
John Mason
Fair enough.
The accounts talk about the identified key risks and mention the five top ones, which are cybersecurity, student experience, staff experience, research excellence and financial sustainability. I have to say that the descriptions are quite vague. Under student experience, it says that bad student experience could go on to mean a reduction in student recruitment, but student recruitment was not one of the top risks. Do you look at those identified key risks and assess them in some way, or do you challenge them or accept them?
