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 1652 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
[Made a request to intervene.]
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
To amend the record, I was quoting Richard Leonard, who said that, despite the bill’s flaws, he would vote for it. I could not understand the rationale behind that position. I admire Richard Leonard in many respects, but not for that comment.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
I spare no one in commenting on legislation being flawed, including members in my own party group, and I have made such comments since I came to Parliament. As a former solicitor—as the member is, too—I cannot say that I am content to pass something that is flawed and that could, in fact, be made better.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
Thank you for taking my late request to speak, Presiding Officer.
There are two reasons why I will not support the bill. First, the review of by the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee must be undertaken, given the huge flaws in the process. Secondly, I want to refer specifically to Richard Leonard’s summing up on behalf of the Labour Party. He said two things that, in my view, were actually reasons why the Labour Party should not vote for the bill. I very much support having the means to recall Parliament and deal with miscreant MSPs. However, the first thing that Richard Leonard said was that he would support the bill
“for all of its flaws”.
Then, to justify that, he said that the bill sends a message. Legislation can, indeed, send a message, but it should not be flawed—not from the outset. That is my major concern.
This is a serious business. For legislation to be effective, it must be tightly drawn, it must be just and it must not have unintended consequences. In this case, it should not be introduced ahead of the review that is already due to be carried out.
For those reasons, I cannot see why the member and the group on the Labour benches are supporting the bill. Like Richard Leonard, I will be retiring, and to hear someone in here supporting flawed legislation is simply wrong.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
I spare no one in commenting on legislation being flawed, including members in my own party group, and I have made such comments since I came to Parliament. As a former solicitor—as the member is, too—I cannot say that I am content to pass something that is flawed and that could, in fact, be made better.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
[Made a request to intervene.]
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
To amend the record, I was quoting Richard Leonard, who said that, despite the bill’s flaws, he would vote for it. I could not understand the rationale behind that position. I admire Richard Leonard in many respects, but not for that comment.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
Thank you for taking my late request to speak, Presiding Officer.
There are two reasons why I will not support the bill. First, the review of by the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee must be undertaken, given the huge flaws in the process. Secondly, I want to refer specifically to Richard Leonard’s summing up on behalf of the Labour Party. He said two things that, in my view, were actually reasons why the Labour Party should not vote for the bill. I very much support having the means to recall Parliament and deal with miscreant MSPs. However, the first thing that Richard Leonard said was that he would support the bill
“for all of its flaws”.
Then, to justify that, he said that the bill sends a message. Legislation can, indeed, send a message, but it should not be flawed—not from the outset. That is my major concern.
This is a serious business. For legislation to be effective, it must be tightly drawn, it must be just and it must not have unintended consequences. In this case, it should not be introduced ahead of the review that is already due to be carried out.
For those reasons, I cannot see why the member and the group on the Labour benches are supporting the bill. Like Richard Leonard, I will be retiring, and to hear someone in here supporting flawed legislation is simply wrong.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall of Members) Bill
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Christine Grahame
rose—
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 19 February 2026
Christine Grahame
I agree that decisions should follow clinical judgment. However, my question was prompted by a constituency case involving a child who, at home, exhibits extreme behaviour that is deteriorating. She masks the behaviour at school and in public, so the school will not and cannot make an urgent referral. At home, her increasingly violent behaviour to her family and her self-harm impact seriously on her twin sister, who is mimicking that behaviour. I am most concerned about her mother’s health as she has a heart condition and, to be frank, is at breaking point.
The girl has waited since June 2023 for a CAMHS assessment, but after three years she is now further down the waiting list. That cannot be right, and hers might not be the only such case. Does the First Minister agree with me that in this case urgency should be created by her behaviour, which consists of self-harm and harm to others, and not the locus, although it appears to have been determined by the locus here? As I have anonymised and abbreviated the circumstances in her case, may I send more details to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care so that he can look into it?
