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 853 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Emergency Cardiac Care
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
Jenni Minto
When the First Minister and I met the Hill family, one of the outcomes concerned the need to understand clearly what sportscotland is doing. Sportscotland has some guidelines, and Scottish Rugby and the Scottish Football Association have clear pathways to ensure that people who are participating in sport have the right healthcare monitoring that they need. In that meeting, I was struck by the work that the Hills have been doing on monitoring young children who have been playing sport. We have been looking at that in preparation for any change in the UK NSC guidelines.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Emergency Cardiac Care
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
Jenni Minto
I understand the concerns that you have raised, Mr Ewing. That response prompted us to start thinking about, if that decision was changed, what we need to do in Scotland to work with clinicians to ensure that we have the right processes. Those questions prompted us to review whether we would change what we do if the UK NSC’s decision changes in three years.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Emergency Cardiac Care
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
Jenni Minto
Yes, and I was, too. That is why it is important that Public Health Scotland is now gathering the inherited cardiac conditions information to allow us to shift, and is also gathering information from sportscotland about what is done through sport. As I said earlier, the information that the Hill family gave us at the meeting with the First Minister was very compelling and we are looking at that.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Emergency Cardiac Care
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
Jenni Minto
I am content to take that away and have a conversation with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills about it. You are right that, in different areas of Scotland, different training is given. I have highlighted that people from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution may be going into schools, and I know that the St John Ambulance service has a very good plan to go into schools to provide support with that. I completely understand where you are coming from.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Emergency Cardiac Care
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
Jenni Minto
I would be happy to have that engagement. From a public health perspective, we have very good relationships with Scottish Women’s Football, which has supported us with an anti-vaping campaign as well.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Jenni Minto
I will hand over to Professor Bauld to answer that.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Jenni Minto
That is a good question. We were talking about that earlier. The LCM will allow us to include digital ways of getting identification, but it will not stop the use of paper identification. We will not be repealing provisions on the use of paper forms of identification from the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010 until we have new regulations in place.
We will do some consultation on the regulations to ensure that we get them right, but it is through the important conversations that we have with trading standards and the regulatory review group representing businesses that we will understand the best way of implementing them if the decision is made to do so.
As I highlighted earlier, we also have the updated register, which will allow us to push out information to retailers, so that they are kept informed of any changes.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Jenni Minto
I often speak to officials about that. We currently have ASH Scotland doing a review of how smoke-free spaces around hospitals are being enforced. We will use that to look at the possibility of having other spaces, perhaps. Consultation is important, so we will have that work as part of an evidence base, but we will then go out and consult more widely, as I have highlighted before, with RRG and other organisations.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Jenni Minto
We have had a number of conversations about that issue in looking at the bill. We have raised challenges on that, because we recognise that some products might be described as rechargeable simply because they have a USB point in them. The bill has been drafted as broadly as possible. There is a requirement that, if something has a removable coil, it would be defined under the bill as not being rechargeable. That is the work that we have been doing on that.
I absolutely recognise that we need to make sure that we capture all the new products that are coming in; the bill has been drafted as broadly as possible.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Jenni Minto
Oh, you are referring to proxy purchasing. My apologies—I misunderstood your question. No, there is absolutely no change in that regard. Proxy purchasing would still fall under this bill.
