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 1245 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
Is there enough resource in the system to address this ever-evolving situation? How do you feel about the resource?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
I have a couple of questions about food crime. When I was reading the meeting papers again, I was struck by the fact that a lot of food crime is undertaken by people who have legitimate roles in the food industry, which allows them to exploit it. How does FSS approach food crime that is facilitated by or organised within the food industry? Is that a key strand of work that you have on your radar?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
Good morning. I want to speak about human rights and how we balance them with other considerations, which you have spoken about in your answers and in your opening statement. The regulations allow the suspension of visits where a provider has reasonable cause to believe that it is essential to prevent serious risk.
What specific human rights criteria will providers be expected to apply when they are determining whether the threshold is met? How will you ensure that visiting restrictions are genuinely a last resort and that they are proportionate and time limited, given the concerns that we have heard about the lack of clarity that there could be about terms, such as “reasonable cause” and “serious risk”?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
My final question is about whether you could commit to ensuring that there is greater oversight, which you have already spoken about, and enhanced review mechanisms to limit the discretion of providers so that that the rights of residents are consistently maintained and they are consulted and have a voice in decisions that are being made.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
Good morning. I want to spend a bit of time talking about food processing, food safety and food crime. Is there any synergy between addressing those three issues and the creation of a good food nation, or could any tensions arise as we seek to ensure that we have food safety, address food crime and have safe food processing?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
Thank you. That is very helpful.
Let us stick with the issues of food safety and food processing. I was interested to read in the meeting papers that, according to the most recent lab report data that is available, the detection rates for food-borne pathogens have remained static during the past five years. Is there any information about why that is? Is it because we are getting better at detecting those pathogens, or is there still an issue with food processing that has caused the number of pathogens to remain static over the past five years?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
I am part of the cross-party group on food, and we are very aware of the big, important issues, such as the capturing of counterfeit vodka and the court case on the misrepresentation of tea.
You have addressed my next question, which was about collaborative working with the Food Standards Agency and others. What are your future priorities for food crime, and are they aligned with those of the Food Standards Agency?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
It is helpful for us to understand that the code will seek to flesh out the scenarios, because we do not want to scenario plan today and think about different instances in which it could be applied. The information should be contained in the guidance and the code to give operators an understanding of how they should balance human rights and look at each situation before they come to conclusions.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Elena Whitham
Further changes could come forward when you are looking at the review mechanisms and processes.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Petitions
Meeting date: 10 February 2026
Elena Whitham
I agree with my colleagues. We have fulfilled the petitioner’s request to look into the issue in depth. Given what is contained in the petition about the lack of a diagnosis and the consequences that that can have on somebody’s life, the next committee should have an on-going look at the issue. However, as I say, we have fulfilled the petitioner’s request.
