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 2507 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise: Whole Family Wellbeing
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
John Mason
So you cannot go back to that in the future.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise: Whole Family Wellbeing
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
John Mason
Did that service receive funding from the council?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise: Whole Family Wellbeing
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
John Mason
Can you tell us roughly what the cost is if you have a mother and a child in for six months?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise: Whole Family Wellbeing
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
John Mason
My question is always, “Although we might save £15, where do we get the £1 to spend this year?”
Barbara Keenan, as the other third sector representative, do you want to comment, or is your view the same as Fiona Bradford’s?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise: Whole Family Wellbeing
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
John Mason
Am I right in saying that the decision about the PEF money is for the headteacher?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise: Whole Family Wellbeing
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
John Mason
I do not know whether you are happy for me to move on to the next question, convener.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
The Promise: Whole Family Wellbeing
Meeting date: 15 January 2025
John Mason
That is fine—that is what I was going to touch on.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
John Mason
I will build on what has been said. You said that the indication is that income tax will not change or be increased between now and the election, and neither will council tax be radically changed. Does that leave us with the problem that we just do not have enough tax income for the services that we want to provide? Countries such as Denmark have much higher taxes as a proportion of GDP. Do we need to consider raising taxes?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
John Mason
Are you optimistic that you can hold the line of 3 per cent—or 9 per cent over three years—in the face of any pressures? We do not want rubbish piling up in the streets, so bin collection staff have quite a lot of power. In the past, we have also had to provide extra money for colleges.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
John Mason
I add my voice to that of Michael Marra, who asked whether the lobbying register is of any value whatsoever. It was one of my possible questions, but I will leave it just now.
Other services, such as the national health service and general practitioners, will probably have to absorb some of the national insurance increases, because it does not look as if we will get full compensation from Westminster. Did you consider the idea that MSPs should absorb part of the NIC raise and take a lower pay increase?
