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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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Employment Rights Bill (UK Parliament Legislation)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Carol Mochan
You have answered quite a lot of the questions that I was going to ask, so I will have a wee look at the scope of the proposals and the funding. Can you clarify why the proposed negotiating body will exclude children’s social care staff? Is there a particular reason for that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Employment Rights Bill (UK Parliament Legislation)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Carol Mochan
That is a helpful clarification—thank you.
On funding, have you done any cost analysis of sectoral bargaining and fair work arrangements? Could we look at anything on that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Carol Mochan
You have possibly touched on some of the things that I was going to say about the workforce and the importance of supporting the workforce. We have heard some concerns that workforce constraints could limit the bill’s implementation. Do you have any thoughts on that? Does anything additional need to happen so that the workforce can ensure that the bill’s provisions are realised?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Employment Rights Bill (UK Parliament Legislation)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Carol Mochan
Is that information publicly available?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Employment Rights Bill (UK Parliament Legislation)
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Carol Mochan
On the options appraisal of the models that will apply after the UK bill comes into force, do you veer towards a voluntary model?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Carol Mochan
Malnutrition is believed to be on the increase across Scotland, particularly in our vulnerable communities. As well as that being totally unacceptable, it places significant pressures and costs on our healthcare system. Many families, including in my South Scotland region, face high costs, poor food availability and significant inequalities, all of which limit their access to nutritious foods.
The cabinet secretary referred to the malnutrition short-life working group. It was commissioned to recommend a framework for the prevention of malnutrition and dehydration more than two years ago, but we have had no detail to date. When will the framework be published?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Carol Mochan
Is the First Minister aware that Stagecoach west Scotland’s drivers are the lowest paid of any Stagecoach bus drivers across the United Kingdom? The drivers have simply tried to stand up for themselves, but the company has tried to reduce their leave and cancelled all existing leave over a planned strike period, which has caused much distress to everyone. That is just one of the many tactics that Stagecoach is using to prevent ordinary workers from having any say in their conditions. Does the First Minister agree that those drivers deserve a fair pay deal?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Carol Mochan
To ask the Scottish Government what recent action it has taken to improve the prevention and monitoring of malnutrition and dehydration. (S6O-04692)
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Carol Mochan
I am interested in the national service specification for substance use support services that the Government has committed to publishing. Is there any idea when that might happen? How will the impact of the service specification be monitored? What contribution will implementation of the service specification make to meeting the intended outcome of the bill?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Employment Rights Bill (UK Parliament Legislation)
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Carol Mochan
The discussion is really helpful. The element of the barriers to trade unions is important, because there is no doubt that, in our regions, we come across employers who put up barriers to or bring up fears around care sector workers being active in the trade union movement, which is totally unacceptable. It is good to hear about that from witnesses such as you. We hope that people will approach us about anything that we can do to help.
My question relates to the agreement that seems to be in place but has not actually gone anywhere, which is frustrating. First, what are the barriers and what can our committee do to try to move that forward? Secondly, would getting the LCM through the Parliament nudge the agreement closer and allow us to get it done?
