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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 818 contributions
|
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 8 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
Do any of the other witnesses have any views on those questions?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 8 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
I worry that we are still understating this. Can any of us imagine the furore that we would be in the middle of at the moment if the BBC were creating non-consensual sexualised images of people, including children, in the way that X and xAI’s products are creating them? The gulf in the way in which we regulate the different parts of what is now a single media landscape is just extraordinary.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 8 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
Good morning. For the purpose of today’s meeting and the rest of the inquiry, I draw attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am an associate member of the National Union of Journalists.
On charter renewals, all the witnesses have talked about BBC Scotland having a greater level of autonomy—Professor Happer mentioned that, and Professor Beveridge talked about the idea of having a federal BBC. There is a range of scenarios that we could get into. There is a spectrum with regard to the extent to which we want Scotland’s distinct identity in the BBC to be expressed and the different ways in which it could be expressed.
I remember making similar points in the run-up to the 2014 referendum—that feels like at least a generation ago now. At that time, I talked about a way of separating the question of the BBC’s status from the constitutional debate. I do not think that I used the phrase “federal BBC”, but I said that, if decisions about the charter and changes to the BBC were subject to co-decision making by the nations of the UK or of these islands, you would have a multinational broadcaster, even in the context of Scotland in the union, and it could continue to exist and serve the different nations even if Scotland became independent.
If we were to go down the route of having greater autonomy or a federal BBC, would a change to the Scottish Parliament’s wider role in relation to media regulation be required? Could we have a federal BBC with Ofcom’s responsibilities still being entirely reserved, for example? Does the debate need to be wider than the BBC when it comes to the role that Scotland and its governance structures would have in shaping the media landscape?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 8 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
It is about supply, too.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 8 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
A broadcasting commission.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 8 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
So it would not carry out some of the functions of the current BBC, but the political decision making by ministers and Parliament would perhaps be separated out.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Scottish Broadcasting
Meeting date: 8 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
I am thinking about all this in the context of where we are and how the wider landscape has changed. Decade after decade for almost a century, we have been having these debates about the BBC charter, its renewal and so on. In the early part of that period—and certainly through the 1950s and the decades when I was growing up—the BBC was a dominant beast in the media landscape in both its economic activity and its agenda setting. However, that is not the case any more—the BBC is, in some ways, swimming against the tide. I am in danger of mixing my metaphors too much, but its dominant position is, if not over, then certainly ending.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
My final point is on the accommodation issue that came up earlier. It is more of a suggestion than a request for a response right now. If there is to be further consideration of the Edinburgh accommodation provision, as Andrew Munro mentioned, would it be reasonable to suggest that a principle be included that, if a member whose principal home is in a group 2 constituency can show that renting a room is cheaper than renting hotel rooms, they should be allowed to do it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
Are you are saying that the payment of the real living wage is a criterion?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Patrick Harvie
And will those who do not meet that criterion not be able to access the tax relief?
