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 6939 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
I will move to questions from Douglas Lumsden. Mark Ruskell said to me that the clock does not ever stop, and I agree, but I am running out of time. Any help with short questions and short answers will make my life easier, and it will mean that everyone can get an opportunity to ask questions.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
No, it was not.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
Mark, I am sorry—we are so short of time. You pushed the envelope quite a lot on that. Sarah Boyack, over to you.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
We are so short of time, and I am trying to help. It would be useful for the member and for the committee if we could get that in writing. Maybe one of your officials could make that happen, cabinet secretary. Now we come back to Mark Ruskell for another straightforward question.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
I would like you to clarify something, cabinet secretary. In the past, you have made various announcements on Ardrossan harbour, and I think that you used the word “imminently” about three and a half or four months ago. Can you define “imminently”? Is it going to happen in the next month, two months or three months? What is going on?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
The next questions are from Bob Doris.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
Welcome back. Cabinet secretary, I am sorry for the slight delay—as you can imagine, the draft climate change plan was quite a lengthy subject, and I am sure that you will experience the same next week. However, I apologise for keeping you waiting.
Agenda item 4 is consideration of the draft Digital Waste Tracking (Scotland) Regulations 2026. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has drawn the instrument to the Parliament’s attention under the general reporting ground in respect of a number of areas, as set out in the clerk’s note.
I welcome to the meeting Gillian Martin, the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy, and her supporting Scottish Government officials Haydn Thomas, who is the producer responsibility unit head, and Ailsa Heine, who is a solicitor.
The instrument has been laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that it cannot come into force until the Parliament approves it. Following the evidence session, the committee will be invited to consider a motion to recommend that the instrument be approved. I remind everyone that Scottish Government officials can speak under this item but not in the debate that follows.
The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee noted that there are five errors in what is, ostensibly, quite a short instrument. That is a huge number, so I would be grateful if you could address that in your opening statement, cabinet secretary.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
In fairness, cabinet secretary, I am trying to drill down on whether I can have confidence in the progress. My lack of confidence is sparked by the fact that the Scottish Government failed to meet its climate change targets and had to adjust the climate change plan, which we should have been considering more than 18 months ago. We are now in a position where we are looking at it in the back end of the parliamentary session.
I will park that for a moment. Could you explain the consumer incentives that are in place to encourage EV take-up? You say that you are talking about it and thinking about it. What will it cost and what are your proposals? Would you give everyone some money or a subsidy to buy an EV?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
The information that is collected when the waste is being tracked will be made available to local authorities for their statutory duties. Part of getting people to change their mind is to give them as much information as possible about what waste they are creating. Will the information be used to try to influence public opinion on correct waste management?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Edward Mountain
Welcome back to this meeting of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. Item 6 is consideration of a further draft statutory instrument, the draft Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) (Extension to Maritime Activities) Order 2026. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has made no comment on the instrument in its report.
I welcome the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy back to the meeting, together with her supporting officials from the Scottish Government: Kay White, the team lead; Lauchlan Hall, the senior policy adviser; and Julia Burgham Pearson, a lawyer.
The instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that it cannot come into force unless the Parliament approves it. Following the evidence session, the committee will be invited to consider recommending that the instrument be approved. Officials cannot speak under that item, but they can speak in this one.
Cabinet secretary, would you like to make a short opening statement? I do not mean to bounce you, but we got the information that the impact assessment had been laid on Friday afternoon, which was after the committee papers had gone out. If you would like to bring anything in that assessment to our attention, it would be helpful if you could use your statement to do that.
