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 1244 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I declare an interest as a practising national health service general practitioner. From what has been said so far, I am hearing that the solution is not down to individuals but to the way that food looks in a store and that we do not need people to cook. The answer that you gave to Patrick Harvie was that it is not about educating people on how to cook but, from the sounds of it, getting ready meals to be better.
We have talked a lot about the cost of food. Let us look at Aldi, where you can buy carrots for 42p and a baking potato for 24p and where lettuce and swedes are available for 60-odd pence. We can also look at Lidl, where you can buy 10 pork loin portions for £6.49. Those are affordable prices that allow people to cook for their families on a budget and in a very healthy way. Am I actually hearing that that is not what we need to promote?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Okay. Indian chickpeas with poached eggs: prep time five minutes; cook time 10 minutes.
I will ask Claire Hislop about hospitals. A BBC survey in 2017 said that there was a cost of 94p per meal per patient. How are we getting good, healthy meals for that cost?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
A lot of people would disagree with that. When I worked in the hospital sector, we used to joke that, if you smell the food and you are hungry, something is really wrong.
On the nutritional intake, when Army people go into hospitals, they are on double portions to try to pull up the calorific intake. People in hospital need a huge amount of calories, because they are burning through calories to recover. Will the plan address that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I would like to go back quickly to schools, because I did not get an opportunity to ask about this. We spoke about the food environment outside a school. When I walk down the street, I see an awful lot of secondary school children leaving to go to the chip shop to get the special meal deal or chips for £1. How are we going to incorporate tackling that issue into the plan so that we will allow children to have a healthy meal in the school environment?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I declare an interest as a practising NHS GP.
We have the good food nation plan before us. Is it incumbent on Government-funded organisations, such as the NHS, to provide good-quality locally sourced meals?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Have you eaten a hospital meal?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
You spoke about locally sourced ingredients. Will the plan support healthy ways of eating, such as eating venison? Will it support abattoirs to be able to provide Scottish meat to Scottish people?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I am really glad that you said that.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
The next topic is about children. If we look at our kids, we can see that 30 per cent are going to be overweight and 17 per cent will be obese. In previous evidence sessions, we have heard about how someone from a deprived area is twice as likely to be obese as those who are the most well-off. Will the good food nation plan achieve the target of halving obesity by 2030, which is the Government’s ambition?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Children’s and Young People’s Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
So, we have all the data that we need to achieve better participation in sport but we do not have a national repository for it. Am I paraphrasing you correctly?
