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 1355 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Government and Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Liz Smith
Thank you for your detailed answer. The key point is that the economic forecasters, not least the Scottish Fiscal Commission, are warning strongly about the difficulties with the fiscal sustainability of the social security budget because it is increasing at a faster rate than in other parts of the United Kingdom. The question is whether the evidence that the Scottish Government has about the effectiveness of its policy making is enough to ensure that its policies are the right policies.
There is evidence to suggest that the Scottish child payment is effective enough, but, when it comes to the adult disability payment and some of the other disability payments, there seems to be a lack of evidence. It is all very well to talk about having a more beneficent system that is based on fairness and so on—we all signed up to that. However, we also signed up to a welfare system that delivers to those who are most in need. At the moment, we seem to be increasing social security benefits at quite a rate, and there are questions about whether all of that money is going to those who are most in need and whether the policy is having the unintended consequence of preventing some people from going back into the labour market. That concerns us all, I think, from a fiscal sustainability angle, and I would be interested to learn what work the Scottish Government is doing to address that very serious concern.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Government and Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Liz Smith
Does that mean that, within the vague trends that we have, it is very difficult to predict whether policies that try to reduce the amount of economic inactivity will be able to get that right? Is that one of the major problems?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Government and Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Liz Smith
I will concentrate on the sustainability of the social security budget. At the start of the meeting, the convener flagged up the cabinet secretary’s statistics, which say that the social security payment budget is going up from £6.8 billion in 2025-26 to £8.8 billion in 2029-30. That is almost a 30 per cent increase in four years. Given that you say that the Scottish child payment is effective delivery of social security payments, what work is the Scottish Government doing on the effectiveness of other aspects of the social security budget? I am asking particularly about adult disability payments, which are ballooning out of control.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Scottish Commission on Social Security
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Liz Smith
I will ask about universalism. Mr Pybus, as you are well aware, there is a massive issue around the principle of universalism. It is very nice to say that, in theory, we want to pay out benefits to people universally. As the Government describes it, it is vitally important to our social contract with the people of Scotland that we try to provide benefits across the board. However, if you look at what the medium-term financial strategy told us yesterday, and particularly at what the Scottish Fiscal Commission is telling the Finance and Public Administration Committee, we cannot afford it all. That is the bottom line.
When it comes to supporting those who are most in need, do you think that the principle of universalism is the right approach, or do you think we have to be a bit more careful and try to target those who are in considerable need first?
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Scottish Commission on Social Security
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Liz Smith
I am not asking about the policy role; I am asking about some of the evidence that SCoSS has provided, but I will leave it there. I just think that we could benefit from SCoSS’s experience if it could tell us what we should be looking at.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Scottish Commission on Social Security
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Liz Smith
I ask the question because you have considerable experience of dealing with the broad issues in the social security system and you have had considerable success in doing that. It is incumbent on this committee and others to listen to that experience. When it comes to advising the Government about the facts that it will have to interrogate before presenting its policy, it is very important that it is given guidance on where it can make the biggest difference, especially to people in poverty. That might involve some difficult decisions, particularly, as I say, against the backdrop that the Scottish Fiscal Commission is providing. I am just interested to know whether—
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Scottish Commission on Social Security
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Liz Smith
Forgive me, but I am picking up on what is in our papers. I think that this is a very important part of the whole social security debate, and any advice that SCoSS can provide to us on that evidence would be very helpful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Scottish Commission on Social Security
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Liz Smith
Forgive me, convener, but I think that SCoSS has considerable experience that can help us.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
It is very important, because the Parliament has to work well.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
Is there also a concern that a number of bills that have come to the Parliament have been subject to a very considerable number of amendments, particularly at stages 2 and 3? It is becoming much more difficult for the Parliament to get through Government business because of the size and complexity of a lot of those bills. There are many cases: I can think of three bills, including the Education (Scotland) Bill, to which a large number of amendments have been lodged, but then they have not been moved or have been rejected. Is that aspect of the legislative process a concern for the Government?
