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 1717 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
Good morning. Mr Sousa, I want to talk to you briefly about the issues in the wider UK economy. It is anticipated that the UK black hole is £41.2 billion; debt is around £2.7 trillion. We have seen the yield on 30-year bonds. Potentially, there could be a sovereign debt crisis. You have referenced the very late autumn statement, with a potential impact here. One of the things that worries me is that we tend to take a very nearside view on some of the challenges for the Scottish Government without looking at the bigger picture, so I would appreciate your reflections on that economic reality. There is a good reason why there will be a very late autumn budget. I would appreciate your reflections on that, casting back to some of the complexity and uncertainty that the Scottish Government needs to deal with.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
Following on from that, Mr Robinson, from your audit perspective, you are uniquely placed to take the view that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. Looking at the context, what do you sense is the appetite, based on reading the documents that we are discussing today, for real substantive change rather than keeping the ball bouncing in the light of the considerable uncertainty and complexity? You have long experience in your career. Is there real appetite for change, or are we just necessarily in the time, not that far away from an election, where we can bounce the ball beyond the election?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
I remember bringing up the need for women commissioners with Graeme Roy, probably in 2021. Many people are blindsided because they forget about systemic issues flowing through economics that affect women, and we tend not to gather supporting data that allow for various hypotheses. In my opinion, Professor Roy has done a very good job thus far in starting to broaden out the work of the Fiscal Commission. What do you think that you can bring to the table in that regard, because it still seems like there is quite a gap because we do not always ask the question, “What does the data tell us about women?” If we do not have that data, we need to ask what we can do about that, because we need to understand what the systemic issues are before we try to change them.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
Hello, and thank you for joining us. I noticed on your CV that you are a non-executive board member of Paragon Music Ltd.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
Do you think that that alternative experience—I suppose that one might refer to it as cognitive diversity—is something that you will be able to bring to the perhaps slightly dry subject matter of the Scottish Fiscal Commission?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
We find it exciting, but hey.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
You are absolutely bang on in what you say. You are illustrating by example some of the considerations that might be made when undertaking reform, mapped against continued delivery. The point that I am making is whether, from a public administration perspective, we are missing a trick by not going back to the way we thought things were—that is, ministers and cabinet secretaries set the priorities and attempt to deliver against them, which is very difficult—and removing the civil servants or the former permanent secretary in this example. We need to make sure that they, too, are part of the mix. If it comes down to accountability and final say in the case of headcount, that to me is quite fundamental as to how we assess the probability of delivery. There is not a general discussion about understanding that complexity in the normal way of doing things.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for joining us. I read your CV with interest as well, and there is no denying the depth of your hinterland. Following on from Ross Greer’s question, to what extent do you regard your depth of knowledge, which you have built up over many years, as an opportunity and to what extent do you regard it as a risk? You are steeped in a prevailing culture of thinking, particularly linking back to the Treasury, whose tentacles reach everywhere.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
Yes.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Appointments)
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Michelle Thomson
In your application, you make the statement:
“I have called out bad or dishonest practices.”
Obviously, I do not expect you to cite individual examples, but I am interested that you deliberately chose to do that. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but I am interested in your view of ethics and why you put that in your application. It would be useful to understand a bit more about why you felt that that was sufficiently important.
