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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.

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.

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Displaying 1489 contributions

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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

NHS Grampian

Meeting date: 29 May 2025

Karen Adam

Will the cabinet secretary provide an update on the activity that has been delivered through the additional £30 million that was allocated in 2024-25 to reduce waiting times in NHS Grampian? What further work will the Scottish Government undertake to ensure that reductions continue?

Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Bosnian Genocide in Srebrenica (30th Anniversary)

Meeting date: 29 May 2025

Karen Adam

I thank my colleague Michelle Thomson for bringing this vitally important motion before the Parliament.

The 30th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica is not only a time to mourn the 8,372 lives lost; it is a time to reflect on the responsibilities that we carry as parliamentarians, as educators and as human beings. We say never again, but that promise must live in action, not just in memory, because genocide does not begin with weapons; it begins with words, dehumanisation, division and the slow erosion of empathy.

It is in our schools, our homes and our institutions that we must build the resilience to resist that, which is why I am proud to mention the young people and teachers at Banff academy in my constituency. This year, three of its religious, moral and philosophical studies pupils received national recognition in the Beyond Srebrenica national schools competition for their powerful and compassionate writing about the genocide.

Finlay in secondary 4 was named the overall senior phase winner, and he will soon travel to Bosnia on a fully funded visit, including a trip to the Srebrenica memorial centre. Kellan and Nikolas, both in S3, were also highly commended. All three pupils and the staff who supported them are here in the Parliament today, and I am delighted to welcome them, along with other Banff academy pupils, who are here to celebrate and support one another’s achievements.

Earlier this year, Banff academy also took part in a powerful international art project called “Banff to Bethlehem”, working with a Palestinian artist to explore themes of resilience and solidarity. The Banff academy pupils’ artwork was actually projected on to the separation wall in the West Bank. That is essential education with critical engagement, teaching not just what it means to care but what it means to act.

In a year that marks both 80 years since victory in Europe day and 30 years since the horror of Srebrenica, education such as this could not be more vital. Schools do more than teach lessons; they ensure that fostering emotional intelligence, social responsibility and a deep understanding of justice is a part of our education system. After all, is that not the most important education that we could give our children?

We have a moral duty not to look away from what has happened and is happening in the world. The genocide in Srebrenica happened in plain sight, in a United Nations-declared safe zone, and it was made possible by years of hate speech, scapegoating and propaganda. The Mothers of Srebrenica, who have fought tirelessly for justice and recognition, show us the enduring cost of silence and the strength of truth. I commend the work of Remembering Srebrenica and Beyond Srebrenica for preserving the truth and passing it on to future generations. Their efforts ensure that remembrance is not a relic of the past, but a living force that challenges hate wherever it surfaces.

Let us be clear: when we see the rise of far-right rhetoric in the United Kingdom and witness on-going atrocities around the world, including in Palestine, we must not lose our moral clarity. We do not meet hate with hedging, but with courage and conscience.

True leadership is not found in dog whistles or division but in the values that we pass on to our children, in the stories that we choose to tell and in the communities that we choose to stand with. Today, as we honour those who died in Srebrenica, we must also commit ourselves to the living—to standing up for truth, dignity and justice. The greatest lesson to learn is that we must ensure that “Never again” is not just a phrase that we say but a promise that we keep.

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