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 1523 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Ross Greer
Thanks. We will be take that up with Professor Gillespie tomorrow.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Ross Greer
Were you provided with reassurances, either formally or informally—for example, by other members of the executive group—that he was not so implicated in the crisis that he would have been an inappropriate appointment?
11:00Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Ross Greer
Was the incident group that was set up by the executive group—I think that it was called the executive group’s incident group—approved by the court? Did the executive come to the court and say, “There is a crisis, and we want to deal with it through this structure, which is this incident group that will respond,” or were you informed after the fact that, “This is what we are doing—we have set up this group and we are coming up with a recovery plan”?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Colleges (Financial Sustainability)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Ross Greer
I have another question, which is on industrial relations, but if Wayne Powell wants to come in first, that would be great.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Colleges (Financial Sustainability)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Ross Greer
That is really useful—thank you.
I will condense my second question, which is on industrial relations in the college sector and which we could talk about all morning. I am interested in your thoughts on National Joint Negotiating Committee reform and the lessons that have been learned from the exercises that we have been through. There have been a number of exercises that have reflected on the NJNC structure, process and outcomes. In the latest exercise, there was a really long delay to get collective responses, and there has not been much progress since then.
I am interested in any brief reflections, not on why everything has happened, but on how we can move forward. Would structural reforms to the NJNC help, or are the issues that would ease the industrial relations challenges separate to that? Ultimately, it is about finances, but I am interested in the machinery of industrial relations and whether improvements could be made.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Colleges (Financial Sustainability)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Ross Greer
Good morning, everyone. As part of the committee’s evidence taking on the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill, one of the more controversial bits of evidence—as you will probably have heard—was when one of the managing agents for apprenticeships confirmed that they take a 40 per cent cut of apprenticeship funding. That came after the college sector had given evidence on the bill.
Although we are now finished with hearing stage 1 evidence on that bill—and today’s discussion will not contribute to our report on it—it would still be useful to have on the record the position of colleges on how money in the apprenticeship system is best used. I would specifically like to hear your reaction to the confirmation that managing agents are taking a 40 per cent cut. There have been suggestions that it might be as high as 60 per cent in some cases.
I will start with Andy Witty for a sectorwide position.
10:15Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Colleges (Financial Sustainability)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Ross Greer
I see that Vicki Nairn and Joanna Campbell want to come in, and they should feel free to do so. For the sake of time, I will condense my second question, because I think that the discussion is useful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Colleges (Financial Sustainability)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Ross Greer
To oversimplify, can you give me a yes or no answer as to whether the tertiary education bill will improve the situation?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Colleges (Financial Sustainability)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Ross Greer
There is a significant amount of money in the system to fund apprenticeships. I would be interested to hear the position of principals and institution leaders. Is there a better-value way to deploy that money, whether through reform of the relationship with managing agents or through more direct funding? Andy Witty has laid out the sector’s position, which is that that is best done through the SFC.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Colleges (Financial Sustainability)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Ross Greer
Is that because of a lack of unanimity from everyone who would need to be around the table?
