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 2022 contributions
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Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Environmental Standards Scotland (Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and Future Priorities)
Meeting date: 25 March 2025
Bob Doris
So, unless my briefing paper is wrong—and I am looking at the convener when I say this—it appears that the cost would be £819,000 plus another £100,000.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Environmental Standards Scotland (Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and Future Priorities)
Meeting date: 25 March 2025
Bob Doris
Would it be reasonable, Mr Roberts, to have a core range of provisions that are costed, with the ability to flex up and get additional expenditure in years 2 or 3, instead of seeking the best part of a million pounds in year 1?
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]
Environmental Standards Scotland (Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 and Future Priorities)
Meeting date: 25 March 2025
Bob Doris
The note that I have here says that the £819,000 would be for 10 members of in-house staff. They, by definition, would not be consultants.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Bob Doris
I am listening with interest to the points that you are making, but I still have in my head what Megan Gallacher and Jeremy Balfour said about your amendments having potential unintended consequences.
That figure of 700 is interesting. It is not one that I had heard before. Do you know if there is any breakdown or analysis of those 700 cases? Before supporting amendment 1052, I would like to understand what those 700 stories look like. Are there themes and trends within that?
What happens if we move away from giving discretion to local authorities? I do not want to get into giving local case studies in my city and constituency, but I have seen good use being made of that discretion—I realise that that might be a controversial thing to say—and I have to wonder about the unintended consequences of taking it away. If we can analyse and understand the circumstances of those 700 cases, it will inform Parliament, either through this process or at a later date, when it comes to enacting the provisions that you are suggesting.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Bob Doris
Is the member suggesting that, when local authorities carry out their due diligence in relation to their plans for addressing housing needs and investing in the social rented housing stock, they are not taking into account the general housing needs in the local authority area? My understanding is that local authorities are quite attentive to those issues, so I am trying to work out what amendment 1078 is trying to fix.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Bob Doris
I will finish this point and then I will take your intervention.
I suggest to Mr Balfour that we amend the bill today, then work with Mr Stewart and others ahead of stage 3 to refine the legislation where we think that it could be improved. That would keep us together on a cross-party basis, which would be really important and powerful.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Bob Doris
I do not have any other particular comments to make, other than to thank Mr Stewart for his intervention and to emphasise again that it would be really beneficial for us to hang together as a committee, due to the importance of Mr Stewart’s amendments. Mr Stewart eloquently put on the record why they are so important, so I will leave it there.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Bob Doris
I agree with Maggie Chapman on all of that. The question is not whether we should have targeted strategies to support different groups but whether we should put in statute additional specific provisions for them in order to underpin those strategies. That is the debate that we are having. I will wait to hear what the minister says on that issue, but I thank Maggie Chapman for putting her concerns on the record.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Bob Doris
I will be uncommonly brief with my contribution. During that exchange, we lost a bit of the purpose of Mr Stewart’s amendments. It is crazy that, if we are trying to prevent homelessness, anyone would ever consider making a judgment call on how someone in their time of greatest need came to be threatened with homelessness. If our ambition is to sustain people in their tenancies, that seems crazy to me. The idea of taking intentionality and that judgment call out of the system is an absolute no-brainer. Quite frankly, history will show that we should have done that some time ago. That is at the heart of these amendments to the bill.
I suggest to Mr Balfour—he said how his party will vote—that we have a three-stage process to legislation in the Parliament. Knowing Mr Stewart well, I am sure that he would work with you if you support the amendments today.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 20 March 2025
Bob Doris
I am listening with interest to the points that you are making, but I still have in my head what Megan Gallacher and Jeremy Balfour said about your amendments having potential unintended consequences.
That figure of 700 is interesting. It is not one that I had heard before. Do you know if there is any breakdown or analysis of those 700 cases? Before supporting amendment 1052, I would like to understand what those 700 stories look like. Are there themes and trends within that?
What happens if we move away from giving discretion to local authorities? I do not want to get into giving local case studies in my city and constituency, but I have seen good use being made of that discretion—I realise that that might be a controversial thing to say—and I have to wonder about the unintended consequences of taking it away. If we can analyse and understand the circumstances of those 700 cases, it will inform Parliament, either through this process or at a later date, when it comes to enacting the provisions that you are suggesting.
