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 1454 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Good morning. There is a sum of £4.4 million to support local authorities, health boards and the newly established Scottish Food Commission. What is the total administrative cost of the commission?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I have a couple of questions. I declare an interest as a practising national health service general practitioner.
First, have you engaged with providers to see whether the uplift will actually cover the costs?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I understand how you have come up with that figure, but my question was not about that. I asked whether you have engaged with providers to see whether the uplift will actually cover the cost of care.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I declare an interest as a practising NHS GP.
I support the principle behind the instrument. Personal and nursing care are fundamental for dignity in later life and uprating payments is necessary and welcome. However, we must be honest about the pressures that are facing the sector. Care providers are dealing with rising workforce costs, energy bills, insurance premiums and regulatory requirements. The question is not whether an uplift is appropriate but whether it is sufficient. If it fails, the consequences do not sit quietly in our social care sector; they present as delayed discharge, hospital pressures and workforce instability.
The minister said that it was not possible to increase the payments for social care above the GDP deflator because of budgetary pressures, but then £149 million was found for resident doctors, £36 million for rolling out GP walk-in centres that GPs say will not work and £30 million was found for an NHS app that will not be rolled out until 2030 and, as we are talking specifically about social care, £30 million has been spent on a national care service that has not been delivered. Those are concerns. We should be putting money into personal care and ensuring that it is free, because that is what was said.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I declare an interest as a practising NHS GP.
Is the designation of an essential care supporter a statutory right for residents, or is it at the discretion of providers?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
In saying that an essential care supporter cannot come into a care home.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
It is, yes. If a resident has dementia and they have designated one child as their ECS and another child disputes that years later after a falling out, who makes the adjudication on that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Thank you. I will just stay with you, Professor Brennan. What modelling has been done on the cumulative regulatory impact on small Scottish food producers?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Staying on that subject, when do you envisage that section 10 will be commenced?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Food Standards Scotland and the First National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Like you, I am worried about the health of our children and want to ensure that our kids have the healthiest possible start in life. You spoke about being able to look at the diets, and Geoff Ogle spoke about how indicators of children’s health should be our primary focus. What is the projected reduction in childhood obesity by 2030?
