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 1727 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
Good morning—I thank the witnesses for joining us. We had quite a protracted discussion with the earlier panel on the financing needed to enable the good work and good outcomes that we want to see arising from the bill. I am aware that many of the ideas that have been discussed are reserved, and I am also aware that the Scottish Government has a fixed budget. That affects not only what we choose to spend the money on but the way in which we spend it and our appetite for risk.
I am interested in your views on the extent to which funding mechanisms have been considered—even by yourselves—and where you see the opportunities within the limitations that I have set out. Gail Macgregor, do you want to go first?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
This is a very general question, and there will be lots of different answers across the 32 local councils. In general terms, given the chronic power restrictions on financing, how much of an entrepreneurial bent do you think councils have? To derive answers in community wealth building, we will need people to think creatively because of the complexity and challenges. What is your general sense of that—by appetite, capacity and capability?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Product Regulation and Metrology Bill (UK Parliament Legislation)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
What consideration have you given to the potential for divergence from EU regulation by the UK Government against a principled approach and agreement of this Parliament, wherever possible, to align? Have you considered practical examples of where that might occur?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Product Regulation and Metrology Bill (UK Parliament Legislation)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
In areas where the UK Government might seek to diverge, do you think that you are covered by now having the requirement that it must seek consent from Scottish ministers?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
Good morning. I thank the panel very much for joining us. Rather than talking about the bill specifically, I will open our discussions by looking at understanding how finance generally can be made available to support some of the bill’s aspirations. I have a slight concern that the bill is being considered in isolation and that, if the finance and particularly the mechanisms are not in place, it will in reality take a long time to deliver anything, even if it has value.
Starting with Adrian Sargent, I would like to get a sense of the mechanisms that will be available to drive the good works of the bill and—critically—of what the blockers are.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
Morven Taylor, I am aware you have not had a chance to come in yet. Would you like to come in on this, briefly? I sense that I have already overrun my time.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
You have touched on a potentially massive area—the split between what you might do and the lending to SMEs that regular commercial banks do, where there are and continue to be fairly critical issues, because that is not a contract of equals. In 2008, we saw a lot of issues when people’s loans were called in even though they were being utterly fulfilled, because there is a contract of unequals.
It sounds as if there is a huge amount of work still to do. Last week, I asked how much has been done to look at the issue from the other side. We have a framework in the bill that the committee is broadly in favour of—we could do some good stuff. From the other side, what can we do to enable that good stuff to be done by actively focusing on financial mechanisms? How much talk, how much appetite and how much emphasis are there on that question in your community? How actively is it being discussed?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
Without putting words in your mouth, it sounds as if there is early-doors thinking across the piece.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
What would be the lever?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Michelle Thomson
Mr Campbell, you mentioned the interface with Government, and you both had terms of reference set for your work. In our evidence session last week, we heard from the Scottish Police Federation that, despite it making clear its concerns about the opportunity costs, which the convener outlined, the dialogue was very limited once things were set in train.
I appreciate the tension in the situation. However, if a cabinet secretary has triggered an inquiry, they must surely have an on-going interest in its implications, even if they cannot get involved or be seen to be involved, for very good reasons that I understand. What would you expect a cabinet secretary who has instructed that an inquiry be undertaken to do during it? Would you expect interest from them during the inquiry or only once it has been completed? As the chair of an inquiry, would you expect them to tell you what you have to do and then go away and only come back years later?
