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 694 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
Thank you, convener.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
Good morning. My internal red flag went up when I saw that the industry representative was entirely comfortable with this level of regulation, which leaves me worried that it will not be robust enough. One of our witnesses said earlier that, although this is better than nothing, you are taking the path of least resistance, particularly in relation to the scope and aspects of harmful activity that will not be covered. Why is that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
I will probably ask the minister how we ensure the adoption of the principle that the cost of regulation falls on the industry that is being regulated.
I will move on to talk about how we might expect the regulations to work alongside the other aspects of how the industry is regulated. Can we improve compliance with the regulations by aligning them with other aspects of what local authorities do to regulate the industry, whether that is on environmental standards or other aspects that they already have responsibility for? Can we get a more effective bang for our buck, if you like, from the resources that local authorities have available to make sure that we achieve compliance in a more coherent way?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
None at all?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
I am trying to be very specific in a limited amount of time. Did you say that you are working with COSLA and that the intention is that it will be given enough resource to enforce the regulations, and that COSLA will be satisfied with the amount of resource that it will have?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
Do you mean that we need to be clear about what it is, understand it and also provide it?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
This is my very last question, then. How do you intend to measure and monitor the impact of the regulations? How will that be evaluated so that we know what needs to happen next?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
Does COSLA agree that it has enough support?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Transparency of Intergovernmental Activity
Meeting date: 20 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
Are there any other views?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Transparency of Intergovernmental Activity
Meeting date: 20 November 2025
Patrick Harvie
That is fair. I suspect that it might be something of an understatement if I say that some of my colleagues would be sceptical that relying purely on our ability to persuade the Government to be forthcoming is enough. Some of our colleagues would trust that that might happen and some would be deeply sceptical about it.
I guess that my emphasis on trying to have some scrutiny before decisions are made is in the context that, for roughly half the history of the Scottish Parliament we have had a minority Government. In the Westminster culture—and some of this came across in the experience we had in our visit to London recently—there is almost an expectation that the Government is naturally the source of authority rather than merely a body to be scrutinised. In a period of minority government such as the current period, the Government still has the right to make decisions such as the signing off of common frameworks—let us assume that progress is made, at the tail end of this parliamentary session, on the signing off of common frameworks—and although, in theory, no Government can bind its successor, the UK Government would strongly expect that a common framework put in place will last through successive changes of Government.
However, if we simply accept that common frameworks have been signed off, that will constrain the ability of future devolved Scottish Governments, whether they have a majority or not, to make decisions on devolved matters, and that constraint will have been put in place by a minority Government, without the consent of Parliament. My concern is about the legitimacy of decisions that are being made in a Government-to-Government relationship without being held to scrutiny.
