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 968 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
The Government has instituted a new all-tenure delivery ambition. Working with the house building sector through close collaboration, we will seek to increase delivery across all sectors by at least 10 per cent each year during the next three years. As I stated at the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on 7 October, the figure on which the delivery ambition will be based is that for all-sector new build completions for the year to the end of June 2025. The figure was published on 30 September and is 18,869.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
We need our planning system to ensure that the right houses are developed in the right places and to be a facilitator of progress and not a hindrance to it. As well as speaking with the planning minister, I have been having extensive conversations with house builders about their experiences of the planning system.
The Government’s actions are being delivered—not least the 23 actions in the planning and the housing emergency delivery plan, which are all now under way or completed. There are also a number of actions in the housing emergency action plan, which was published on 2 September—not least, my communicating to the heads of planning that I expect an emergency-led approach to be taken and proportionality when dealing with small and medium-sized enterprises, and an important ministerial oversight direction whereby I will observe the application of the national planning framework 4 and will be able to intervene where needed.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
UK policies are indeed hindering progress. Immigration is absolutely vital to sustain multiple sectors of the Scottish economy, including construction, and the UK Government’s approach has completely failed to recognise Scotland’s needs. The same applies to the hike in national insurance contributions—I am sure that all members, when they make visits across Scotland, are being told how damaging that is to businesses and organisations, because it permanently uplifts labour costs.
All that comes atop the incredible economic self-harm of Brexit and the inflationary pressures that have led to construction costs being some 40 per cent higher this year than they were five years ago. I am afraid that that is, as has been set out, just another in the suite of reasons why it will always be to Scotland’s detriment to be governed by remote politicians in London.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
Scottish ministers have regular discussions regarding matters that affect our shared portfolio interests. There is clearly considerable crossover between the Minister for Public Finance and me. We meet regularly to discuss the planning system in respect of housing, and we did so most recently at the meeting of the housing emergency action plan oversight board on Thursday 30 October.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
Following my appointment as Cabinet Secretary for Housing, I met representatives of the five councils that face the most sustained housing pressures, which included meeting Fife Council on 10 July. We discussed Fife’s local housing emergency, its affordable home supply programme, temporary accommodation and homelessness pressures. Following the development of the housing emergency action plan, I will now meet local authority leaders quarterly, and those meetings will run alongside regular engagement by my officials.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
I am sorry to hear of the difficulty that Ms Ewing’s constituent has experienced and I personally send them my best wishes. The Government wants everyone who requires an adaptation to be able to access that quickly, easily and in a way that meets their needs, which is why we increased the adaptations budget for registered social landlords to £20.9 million this year, as Ms Ewing mentioned, and why we have committed to a general review of the adaptations system.
I would be pleased if Ms Ewing and I could discuss the details of her constituent’s case, so that I can make representations to Fife Council to find out how that can be progressed.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
On the contrary, the SNP Government has a very strong record on the delivery of affordable homes. I mentioned in an earlier answer that we have delivered more than 140,000 affordable homes since we came into government, 100,000 of which have been for social rent. That is 47 per cent more per head of population than in England and 73 per cent more than in Wales.
However, that is not to say that there is not work to be done. That is why, in my answer to Willie Rennie, I pointed out that we have, for the first time, offered multi-annual funding certainty. We have committed to an uptick in funding and to a suite of developments, including on planning and permitted development rights, which I hope will help to deliver the homes that we need.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
I am pleased to hear that that approach has been confirmed by Glasgow City Council. It builds on Scotland’s reputation for, and experience of, the delivery of affordable homes—for example, the Government has supported the delivery of more than 140,000 affordable homes since we came into office. Everything that the Government has been doing, particularly in relation to the housing emergency action plan, has been about understanding the need to step up that delivery and to put in place the funding to do that.
We have boosted Glasgow City Council’s budget this year by more than £24 million so that it can acquire properties and bring them into use. That brings the council’s total budget allocation for the affordable housing supply programme to more than £127 million in this financial year.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
Although we focus on creating the right conditions for the further development of affordable homes, we understand that we must deliver more now, while those homes are being built. Therefore, our focus in the past few years has been on directly funding councils to assist them both in turning round social housing voids and in acquiring homes on the open market, as Mr Stewart described.
We made £40 million available for that in the previous financial year, which delivered around 1,000 more affordable homes, and in the housing emergency action plan in September we doubled that to a further £80 million. If my figures are correct, that has translated into a further £2.2 million for Fife Council alone, and I would expect it to put the money to that use.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Màiri McAllan
One of the main representations that have been made to me is that multi-annual certainty is needed on funding, because that is essential for people to plan things that are by their nature multi-annual, such as house building. In the housing emergency action plan that the Government produced over the summer, we committed to just that, coupled with a commitment of up to £4.9 billion over the next four years.
The affordable housing supply programme is funded to the tune of £808 million this year, and we have committed on a multi-annual basis up to £4.9 billion over the coming four years. I will be working very closely with councils to ensure that that added certainty results in increased delivery, because I know that our communities need that.
