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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 1541 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
If the minister is asking the committee to reject all the amendments in this group today, is it the Government’s intention not to lodge amendments at stage 3 about increasing the amount of legal advice and help that a young person can get at a children’s hearing? Is it the Government’s view that everything is fine in the garden and no changes need to be made?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
I apologise to you, convener, and to the committee, because this will take me a wee bit of time, but these issues are important.
In its stage 1 report, the committee asked for
“clarity on whether the Bill will offer further opportunities”
for legal representation. With my amendments in this group, I seek to strengthen a child’s legal rights as they go through children’s hearings.
Children’s hearings, particularly those that relate to offence grounds, can play a pivotal role in a child’s outcomes and future. Legal representation is essential to ensure that children and their families are fully aware of their rights under the law. However, concerns have been raised that children are not currently aware of their rights and often use advocates or other advisers at hearings, which can diminish their understanding and representation. That is why it is important, as we discuss and debate these amendments, to make a distinction between advocates and advisers and those who are legally trained and qualified.
The Promise Scotland said that one of its key asks for the bill was for there to be an automatic right to legal representation for children who are referred on justice grounds.That right is what I seek to ensure with amendment 77.
The introduction of rights of audience to children’s hearings, linked to specific child-centred and trauma-informed training and training on the ethos and practice of children’s hearings, would go a long way to ensuring that standards are set and maintained in the system. That is what amendment 112 seeks to ensure. There is precedent for introducing rights of audience in a specific forum—for example, the rights of audience that will be introduced for the sexual offences court.
It would take time to build capacity in the sector, although the Law Society of Scotland already offers accreditation for child-centred practice. To allow such capacity to be built, amendment 112 could have a delayed commencement before its provisions are formally introduced into Scots law.
Amendment 113 would introduce a legal aid duty. Amendments 113 and 114 seek to introduce the concept of duty solicitors in the children’s hearings system so that children’s rights are adequately protected throughout the system. The process of introducing duty solicitors is started by amendment 115, which would amend section 18 of the bill to provide information about rights to access legal advice.
I believe that it is really important that the child is offered a lawyer and that, if they want a lawyer, one is provided at the earliest opportunity. If we do not provide for that, the child will always be put on the back foot. We could not imagine that that would be fair to an adult in a criminal or other procedure. We also need a definition of child-centred legal advice, which is linked to rights of audience and training, as I talked about before.
12:45
I lodged my amendments in the group because, back in 2020, “The Promise” said:
“Children and their families must have a right to legal advice and representation if required. Scotland must be clear that the provision of advocacy does not replace rights to legal representation but the two roles (advocacy and legal representation) have a separate, distinct purpose.”
However, there is no reference to the right to seek legal advice anywhere in the bill. That is problematic, particularly given the proposed landscape of complexity being added to grounds hearings, meetings with the reporter after the grounds have been decided, and single-member panel hearings.
My amendment 115 seeks to make the distinct roles of advocacy and legal representation clear and to ensure that the child is provided with information about their right to access legal advice and how to do that at an early stage. It has to come under legal aid, because no child would be able to afford that legal representation. I appreciate that the Government is working on legal aid and that a bill on it has been promised in the next session of Parliament. However, as Ross Greer pointed out, this is our last opportunity to deal with the matter in the current session, and if we do not at least move in the right direction with regard to giving young people independent legal advice, we will miss an opportunity.
I look forward to hearing what members and the minister have to say about my amendments.
I move amendment 77.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 11 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
Will the minister take an intervention?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
I have a couple of quick follow-up questions. First, you talked about free school meals, but could information be shared with local authorities in relation to other benefits, such as school uniform grants? We have had conversations about data sharing on numerous occasions. We are a fairly small country, and it can put people off if they have to keep reapplying for different benefits and grants. How far can we take data sharing?
Secondly, if I may say so, you gave a very good political answer, but I am still not quite sure how we will measure the impact. What process is there to ensure that we know whether, in three years’ time, the system is working better than it is now?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
That is very helpful.
I have a broader question, although I might be going down a bit of a rabbit hole. If we go all the way back—you are too young, cabinet secretary, but for those of us who are slightly older—
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
At our meeting on 22 January, David Wallace told the committee that Social Security Scotland can drive public service reform and efficiencies. He referred to its new payment platform and to data sharing, for example. How will you evaluate whether that happens and whether it contributes to efficiencies across the whole of the public sector?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
Thank you for that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
Indeed. If we go all the way back, we see that the predominant reason why the original payment was brought in was to help disabled people into employment. Do you think that is still the main reason for ADP, or do you think that it has evolved and is now simply a benefit for disabled people because they have extra living costs and that it is not necessarily linked to employment?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Jeremy Balfour
That is helpful.
I want to cover another area quickly. When do you intend to introduce regulations that will enable Social Security Scotland to estimate the levels of fraud and error in the devolved benefits system?
