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 474 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 11 September 2025
Carol Mochan
I will move on to one of the things that witnesses said that we might touch on later: the important investment in ending child poverty and meeting the targets for 2030. Can we meet those targets? Chris Birt mentioned spending pressures. What are the spending pressures around that? Can we, should we and how do we meet those costs?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 11 September 2025
Carol Mochan
Does Edel Harris want to add anything?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 11 September 2025
Carol Mochan
I have one last wee question. We are hearing that we have to get the money—the additional payments—to people, but we also need to do other stuff. How do we get the balance right? Will you remind us of what else it is important that we do to meet those targets?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 11 September 2025
Carol Mochan
Emma Jackson is nodding.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 4 September 2025
Carol Mochan
Of course.
I am interested in the argument that social security should be seen as preventative spend, in how we talk about the matter and in the question whether treating social security as that kind of spend helps with our decision making on the Scottish budget and our seeking to ensure that that approach happens. I wonder whether we can hear from Mairi Spowage first, if she does not mind, because I know that her organisation has responded on that issue.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 4 September 2025
Carol Mochan
I am interested in thinking about the issue in terms of the Scottish budget. Has the Government done enough work on the preventative approach? If we go down that route—we have argued that there are lots of reasons to do so—how will we make sure that it works in terms of the budget?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Carol Mochan
Thank you; it is helpful to know those things.
We have been advised that a small Government team is working on the plan. Is that enough, or will the team be built up? I am also interested to know whether there are good working relationships on this across the UK? The way in which food moves about is important and some of the legislation will also be cross-border, so I would like a wee bit of information about that if possible.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Carol Mochan
I thank the panel members for coming along. We look forward to your evidence. I will start quite generally and talk a wee bit about the plan overall. It is fair to say that it is ambitious but also that discussions have been on-going for many years. We need to move into the action stage; we have talked about it enough.
Can we achieve the outcomes and the vision that we have talked about over the past 10 years? I am particularly keen to know how we can get over the hurdle of cross-portfolio working—we have to do that with this plan. Do you have a view on how we can move it forward? With the size of the Scottish Government, what are the things that we need to do to ensure that it happens? Lindsay Jaacks seems to be nodding.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Carol Mochan
I have one more question, which is for Lindsay Jaacks and is about leadership. Should the leadership come from Government, which then has to pass that to other stakeholders to do the working-beyond-scope activity?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Carol Mochan
I want to understand the power imbalance that some people live through in their life. People often live in poor housing, have precarious work or have caring responsibilities, and we know that there is a high level of health problems in our population. As a politician, I really need to understand my responsibility, and not just the individual’s responsibility, in changing this food environment.
Is there more work to be done to move away from it being the individual’s responsibility to fix the problem and towards politicians and Government taking responsibility? Do we need a wee bit more of that in the plan and perhaps education for some of us as politicians about how we do that?
