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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 1257 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Liz Smith
But cabinet secretary, the Fiscal Commission is predicting that, between the coming budget and 2029-30, the social security budget will go up by nearly 30 per cent. That is a huge increase. The committee is interested to know what might be cut in relation to that spend. We have heard this morning that various other portfolios are complaining bitterly about a lack of money. In order to make judgments on the issue, the committee has to see what the outcomes are. That question is a huge issue for the Scottish Government, given what the Scottish Fiscal Commission says is a completely unsustainable social security benefit system for the future.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Liz Smith
Your colleague Shona Robison is arguing strongly that you cannot roll out universalism to a greater extent because you simply cannot afford it.
To come back on the point that you raised earlier, the Government wants to target those who are most in need. That is what we signed up to in 2018. I suggest that the policy of universalism across the board is simply not sustainable for the Scottish budget.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
Liz Smith
We will leave it there. I am sure that the debate will continue.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Liz Smith
Before I come to my question, minister, I would like some clarity. Throughout the stage 1 process, the Government assured me that its position on the bill was neutral. However, in an answer to the convener this morning, you said that this is not a Government-supported bill. When did you change your position?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Liz Smith
So, you meant “Government-led” instead of “Government-supported”.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Liz Smith
Minister, you have told me—I do not know how many times—that the bill is not affordable. What is the total that the Scottish Government believes is affordable?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Liz Smith
Is it correct that the Scottish Government is considering non-statutory proposals that cost £8 million and perhaps a little bit more?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Liz Smith
That has been suggested, although it has never been formally discussed with me as the member in charge of the bill, but I understand that it is on the public record that the Scottish Government is considering that. Is that the correct total?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Liz Smith
The Scottish Government’s policy of inclusion, as I understand it, is that we should be doing everything possible for every young person. How would that fit with a pilot, which would obviously address only one particular area, one particular school or whatever the Government came up with?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
Liz Smith
Is anything impeding effective zero-based budgeting in terms of the data that we require to ensure that the effectiveness of policies can be measured? Obviously, the other side of the coin is that, if spending takes place, there is a reduction in spending elsewhere. Do we have the right data to be able to make those assessments? We have had discussions at the committee about the fact that some of the data, particularly on things such as the labour market, is maybe not as good as it should be.