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 847 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
It is the flexibility that makes the difference. I remember that when we announced the funding, there was some challenge against having such flexibility and a suggestion that it should be more limited in terms of the choice of how it is used. Headteachers have welcomed the ability to have freedom of choice and expression in using the funding to suit their schools’ needs. David Leng and Alison Taylor might want to talk about some of the PEF sampling work that has been done in this space, because that point has been really powerfully illustrated to them. I look forward to a series of visits about it very soon.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
Yes, but SAC cannot do all that on its own. We need to be mindful that the attainment challenge in itself is also about responding to the societal challenges that we have spoken about, and that there are other elements of support that families need in order to help us to close that gap.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
In my opening remarks I spoke about a number of board appointments—five were made late last year. I referred to Ms Rogers as the new chair, but I accept the convener’s point that she was appointed in December 2023 and so is perhaps not so “new” any more. Fresh leadership was brought in at that time, and we will look at further appointments as part of the upcoming recruitment process.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
Along with the chair, the five people who were appointed in November will transition.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
I am happy to do so.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
That is an interesting point that links to Mr Briggs’s comment about health. I think that, when I did my teacher training at Clydebank high school, we had campus cops in 2007. I am trying to remember how they were funded. They were obviously not funded from SAC, but I do not know what the budget line was at the time.
I know that Mr Greer has strong views about headteachers using PEF for campus cops, but some of them will have contrary views and they are empowered to choose to bring in such interventions.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
No, I have not received it yet.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
I very much agree with Mr Brown’s sentiments, particularly in relation to the ethical processes that are required to be adhered to. That relates back to Mr Greer’s point about the running of a truncated approach to recruitment, which might not lead to some of the positions being regulated. I imagine that that would lead to the Government being pilloried and challenged, as Mr Brown suggested, because we had not followed due process. I agree with the sentiments behind Mr Brown’s question.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge: Post-inquiry Scrutiny
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
I do not accept that, which will not surprise Ms Duncan-Glancy. Record funding is going to local government in the settlement this year—I think that it is £15 billion.
Another thing in relation to the budget is that the Government has provided additionality for ASN and teacher numbers. Staff in our schools really matter, so we have protected and enhanced those budget lines. The line for teacher numbers has gone up to £185.6 million and the line for ASN has gone up to £29 million. The purpose of the ASN funding, which is in addition to an extra £1 billion that is baked into the general revenue grant, is for local authorities to employ more specialist staff.
Ms Duncan-Glancy’s line of questioning is about permanency. We want our local authorities to employ permanent staff. That is why there was extra funding in the budget—it was to allow them to do that and to give them that certainty.
Some staff are employed via PEF, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. One interesting thing about SAC and PEF in their totality is that funding certainty has been associated with those budget lines. It is unusual for a Government to say, “We will give you clear sight over a four-year spending cycle.” The purpose of that was to give local authorities and headteachers certainty that the funding would not be taken away.
Stopping the use of temporary contracts, for example, has been a helpful measure. Of course, we want to increase the availability of permanent contracts, and we will do that by resourcing local government adequately. I therefore do not agree with Pam Duncan-Glancy’s assertion on that point.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 March 2025
Jenny Gilruth
And this—
