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 1222 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
Might I ask for a clarification before I come to my questions? Mr Griffin, are you advising the First Minister that the higher education sector has significant issues, or are you waiting for Mr Swinney to come back to you?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
Is a conversation going on between you and your officials and the Scottish Government about the need to upgrade some of that process in the Parliament?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Public Administration in the Scottish Government
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
That is helpful. Nonetheless, there is a structural issue. Due to how they operate and by their very definition, framework bills make it much more difficult to provide an accurate financial memorandum, because engagement with stakeholders is on-going and, therefore, it is very difficult to calculate future costs.
The committee is concerned because we have recently received quite a number of financial memoranda that are nowhere near accurate. In turn, that makes our scrutiny of the public money spend that is involved very difficult. Is that a matter that concerns you and your officials?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
I will begin by putting on the record that I am representing some former patients of Eljamel in the public inquiry. Will either of you give a view on why you think there is an increasing demand for public inquiries?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
Mr Sturrock, do you have a view?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
To pick up the points that you have both made, in the current environment, there is—sadly, in my opinion—an increasing mistrust in some public bodies because they are not as efficient as they should be and, therefore, are not dealing with some cases effectively. The Government and its agencies are not able to get the answers that they should get to genuine questions, and that is the main reason why the demand for public inquiries is increasing.
That trust element is interesting. The public are looking for trust, and I sometimes think that people trust a judge-led inquiry because they feel that it is the right form for an inquiry to take. However, you are suggesting—again, rightly—that there are other ways of doing inquiries. It is just about how—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
The issue involves marrying together those two difficult issues with an opportunity cost and Government efficiency, and they do not quite fit together. That is one of the big challenges for the committee as to how we go forward.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
You have both mentioned the NHS Highland inquiry. I know that that was done slightly differently to other public inquiries, but did you feel that, at the end of the day, those people who had been clamouring for a public inquiry felt more satisfied than has been the case with other public inquiries, where people have been dissatisfied with the result?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
Whom the public trust—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
It is an important question to ask, because, as you rightly set out, there are other ways of doing inquiries and other witnesses have told the committee the same thing. If the committee ends up recommending that there should be a change in the focus of some inquiries, we must ensure that there is sufficient evidence to prove that the type of inquiry that NHS Highland was subject to can work just as well as a judge-led inquiry that goes on for a long time.
I cannot remember whether it was Mr Campbell or Mr Sturrock who rightly said at the beginning of the meeting that public inquiries are not entirely about what the people who demand the inquiry want. An inquiry is about drilling down into what happened and why, but there is also a more difficult second part, which is about what should be done to address those issues in future, and, as Mr Sturrock rightly pointed out, that requires a different skill set. None of that is about blame, which is, I think, what a lot of people are looking for. Therefore, if we are going to address public concerns, along with those of Government about the costs and efficiency of public inquiries, we must look at the different ways in which they might work.
I am interested in your views on whether, for very difficult cases, it is better to have a judge-led inquiry—for which the public often have a great deal of respect because the judge is independent and well trusted by it—or whether the inquiry might be done in another, slightly less adversarial way. Do you have any comments on that?
