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 1179 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
That is for consistency; the view is that there would be a firewall. The repeal would mean greater accountability and consistency in the implementation of the legislation. That is the thinking behind it. [Interruption.]
Carole Ewart is pointing out to me that other regulators investigate themselves, so it is not a new approach—it would adhere to that general principle.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
The examples that were used would all be covered in other ways. I cannot envisage why the power would be required, but, if the Scottish Government had strong views on the matter, it could lodge amendments at stage 2. The evidence that we have taken and the views from stakeholders show that the power is not required. There is strong support for its removal.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
The position is very similar to the other examples that have been put to me. Although I hope that it would never be used, this is another provision that is intended to be a deterrent and to help drive organisations to deliver on their legal functions and statutory obligations.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
Yes.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
A large part of the cost of the bill will lie with the Information Commissioner. That has been fully costed, because the commissioner will be the main driver of the implementation of the bill. Many people in the FOI community would say that the bill will not cost anything, because it simply requires organisations to do what they should be doing anyway. For example, in relation to training, there is already a statutory obligation on public authorities to update training on an annual basis. Some people would argue that the bill should not require any more money, because that work should be happening anyway.
However, we have not framed the financial memorandum on that basis, and we recognise that how organisations respond will vary. Some organisations might spend a huge amount of money on trying to implement the bill, but others will not. That is why the Information Commissioner’s role in relation to the codes of practice is important in making it really clear to organisations what they require to do to comply with the legislation.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
We hope that, if the bill is enacted, the Scottish Government will deal with those matters more speedily and that designation will speed up. We even hope that the discussion that is taking place today will help to speed up the process of designation.
However, as you know, there is also a new mechanism in the bill that would allow a parliamentary committee to get involved, should it choose to do so. I will use the care example that is currently being looked at by the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government may come forward in the next session of Parliament with proposals to designate parts of the care sector as FOI compliant. It would be quite a big political issue if the Scottish Government were to fail to do that, and a committee of this Parliament—it would be likely to be a health committee—could decide to use its time to consider the issue. It could put out a call for evidence, take evidence from all parties, including the Scottish Government, the sector and campaign groups, come to a view and make a recommendation to Parliament, which could then debate the issue. Obviously, changes to standing orders would be required to enable that to happen.
That would require a committee to decide that it was going to use its time in that way, so it would be likely to happen only for a big political issue. I hope that the fact that the Scottish Government would know that there might be enhanced scrutiny when ministers failed to act would help to drive designations.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
So, you are referring to the designation of a new body?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
Okay. The whole purpose of section 5—and, indeed, the whole bill—is to increase accountability and to drive designations. The reports are intended to drive awareness of the designation of bodies and to create the parliamentary space for such a discussion to take place. The policy intention is to incentivise the greater use of ministers’ power to designate. The intention of the 2002 act was always that bodies delivering public services would comply with freedom of information requests, so the reports would be a regular opportunity to review the Scottish Government’s work to deliver that.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
Is the legal change that you were referring to the designation of a body following a vote by the Parliament?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 November 2025
Katy Clark
I think that that kind of detail would have to be put into standing orders. The advice that we got was that it would not be appropriate for that level of detail to be included in the bill.
It may well differ from one designation to another. If there was a view that the designation of a body needed to be done speedily and the matter was discrete and capable of being curtailed, it may be that the implementation could happen in a very short time. For other matters, it would be different. I think that that would have to be laid out in the proposal that was put before the Parliament.
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