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 1625 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
Section 30 concerns the irritancy of leases and the landlord’s need to serve an irritancy notice on a tenant’s heritable creditor. Some stakeholders have criticised the provision, but I disagree and think that it is both workable and of wider public importance. The responsibility of landlords to search the registers will not place a disproportionate or undue burden on them. The committee has heard from the Scottish Property Federation, which represents landlords, that it has no issue with the requirement and that it is not much different from the reality of how leases work currently.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
Yes—that has been brought up previously in evidence. It is an interesting proposal, and we are looking at how we can move forward on it.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
We can definitely consider that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
I might ask the legal team about that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
I will pass the question to Michael, to talk about the technicalities.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
My understanding is that codification will simplify things by bringing into legislation all the legal principles of tacit relocation. It is a technical legal question, which I will pass over to Michael Paparakis to expand on, given his expertise.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
As I said in my opening speech, the law of termination of leases needs reform because it is inaccessible, uncertain and outdated. The SLC considered the case for reform by consulting advisory groups, issuing a small discussion paper and engaging with the legal profession, landlords and small businesses.
The evidence that the committee has heard shows that legal professionals, the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland have all agreed that reform of some kind is needed. The Law Society, for instance, was clear that there is sufficient litigation and confusion in the area to justify reform for the advantage of tenants and landlords. In Scots law currently, commercial leases are principally agreed and governed by common law rules. When the law is not clear or readily accessible, that can result in unnecessary costs to the tenant and the landlord. Current legalities can cause difficulty for the landlord and the tenant, and resolving those can result in the expense of court proceedings. The bill is looking to simplify and improve that for the tenant and the landlord.
On the economic impact of the bill, I believe that it will have some economic benefit. Most businesses, whether they are small or large, from manufacturing through to professional services, retail, digital start-ups and the hospitality sector, operate to some extent out of let premises. Let premises make up 44 per cent of all non-domestic premises that pay rates, and the rateable value from those premises comes to £2.6 billion pounds. Making the law more certain and accessible can only benefit both tenants and landlords.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
The issue of adding a bit more flexibility between the tenant and the landlord has been raised by a few people. It is an interesting suggestion, which we could explore moving forward. I do not know whether there would be any legal or technical obstacles to that. Michael might want to comment on that.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Siobhian Brown
I do not have any information on that, because it is technical. I will pass the question to Lori Pidgeon or Michael Paparakis.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Dog Theft (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Siobhian Brown
The Scottish Government notes that the bill would make the theft of an assistance dog an aggravated offence. As a result, the court would be required to consider whether the sentence given should be enhanced to reflect the significance of taking an assistance dog. That is one of the issues that the committee will be required to carefully consider as the bill is scrutinised. I note from Mr Golden’s letter to the committee of 18 April that he had engaged with stakeholders such as Guide Dogs Forfar, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Dogs Trust to inform the proposal.
I would like to know more from Maurice Golden about the evidence base to support and justify the position that the emotional impact on victims is not sufficiently considered during sentencing under current law. In the committee’s evidence-taking session on 26 March, the representatives from Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service highlighted that the police
“would have to be able to demonstrate that the accused knew that the dog was an assistance dog to be able to prove the aggravation.”
At the same evidence session, Stuart Munro from the Law Society of Scotland was also clear that
“the sentencing process is already structured in a way that should allow”
information about the impact of the theft of an assistance dog
“to be properly taken into account.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 26 March 2025; c 20-21.]
If somebody actively seeks to steal an assistance dog, our existing law already reflects that as being worthy of a more serious penalty. We are interested in hearing Mr Golden’s views on that when you take evidence from him.
I will bring in Mr Wilson.
