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 2261 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Scottish Government Strategic Commercial Assets Division
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
That is quite helpful information.
How does SCAD assess the effectiveness of previous decisions to intervene, or not, in a particular business or to make follow-on investments such as the recent investment of £14.2 million in Ferguson’s?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Scottish Government Strategic Commercial Assets Division
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
With regard to that expertise, would you get somebody who has an understanding of and experience in the shipbuilding industry to give you that advice?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Scottish Government Strategic Commercial Assets Division
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
I do not dispute that in any way, shape or form, because I genuinely recognise that it is a different operating model.
We have heard today that you do not deal with the day-to-day operations—that is obviously for others—but the fact is that the yard has clearly not been competitive. If there was more scrutiny of the day-to-day operations—whether that is scrutiny of the accounting officer or of the new chief executive, who must obviously be given time to prove his worth—that would surely help to make the yard competitive. The yard cannot compete with China. Very few can compete with countries where the labour costs are a lot less; I think that we would all acknowledge that. There are things that the yard can do, and has done in the past, so that it can compete, but the cost situation is clearly hampering that. Therefore, I implore you and your staff to have more input and to carry out more of a scrutiny function and more due diligence of the yard’s day-to-day operations.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Scottish Government Strategic Commercial Assets Division
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
This is my final question, convener. The version of the First Marine International report that we have is heavily redacted, although there is some very useful and helpful information in what we can read of it. To what extent did Scottish Government officials challenge the levels of redaction in the reports? Did FMI provide you with a rationale for the aspects that it deemed to be too commercially sensitive to release?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Scottish Government Strategic Commercial Assets Division
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
That is unacceptable.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
The correspondence in relation to the instruments has been published alongside the papers for this meeting. It sets out the committee’s questions and the Scottish Government’s responses in full.
The committee’s detailed findings will be set out in its report, which will be published in due course. The report will also set out its consideration of subordinate legislation at this meeting.
The first instrument would make significant amendments to the deposit and return scheme that is contained in the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020, or SSI 2020/154. Does the committee wish to draw the instrument to the attention of the Parliament on reporting ground (i), which is that its drafting appears to be defective in respect of the point that is raised in the committee’s question 10, and on the general reporting ground in respect of the points that are raised in questions 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Instruments subject to Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
The correspondence in relation to the instruments has been published alongside the papers for this meeting. It sets out the committee’s questions and the Scottish Government’s responses in full.
The committee’s detailed findings will be set out in its report, which will be published in due course. The report will also set out its consideration of subordinate legislation at this meeting.
The first instrument would make significant amendments to the deposit and return scheme that is contained in the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020, or SSI 2020/154. Does the committee wish to draw the instrument to the attention of the Parliament on reporting ground (i), which is that its drafting appears to be defective in respect of the point that is raised in the committee’s question 10, and on the general reporting ground in respect of the points that are raised in questions 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
In evidence, we have received a range of detailed drafting suggestions for the bill. Do you have any comments on any of the suggestions that have been made by members of the legal profession and others who have been in touch with the committee?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Minister, what are your thoughts on the argument that the Scottish Government should carry out an awareness-raising campaign on the impact of the bill? If the Government is minded to do so, what form would a campaign take?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 20 May 2025
Stuart McMillan
Before I bring in Jeremy Balfour, I have a couple of questions along this line of questioning. Bill Kidd asked a couple of questions on this, but, whatever process is in the bill—and regardless of whether any amendments go forward—surely it should be clear to any party involved in a lease exactly what the implications will be for them. They should understand what the notice period would be and what the process is for ending a lease. The point that there needs to be a clear narrative and a clear set of rules has come across in the evidence that we have heard, irrespective of evidence on various other things.
You could also argue that there should be a consistent approach. The rigid approach, as proposed in the bill, could work well. However, business is not always as rigid as the rules that are set out. Having a bit of flexibility could be beneficial, as long as everyone understands exactly where they are.
