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 1336 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
I think that this is a very important issue for the committee. There have been substantial concerns about potential—perhaps unintended—consequences, and it would be good to have your assurance on the record that the Scottish Government is listening to those concerns and is prepared to make some amendments.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
Are you aware of the potential impact, and has the Scottish Government discussed that with you?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
Does the level of criticism—particularly that the committee has heard from stakeholders—concern you at all? Is that a warning signal that the tax could have unintended consequences? Quite frequently, during committee evidence and through the submissions that we have received, it has been put to us that there are quite a lot of possible unintended consequences. There is the issue that Mr Marra referred to, which is that some people who could end up paying the tax would not be responsible for the problem. If we go back to what you started with, surely, the principles of Adam Smith are very important for the delivery of the tax. Irrespective of the fact that you cannot comment on the specific policy issue, are you concerned that people are unhappy about some of it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
I completely understand that, because it is your job to make it work. The committee is looking at the tax policy as well as at your role. I am asking whether you are aware that the Scottish Government is concerned about the level of criticism that has been received so far, never mind what the policy might end up being.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
The concern from quite a number of stakeholders is a bit broader than that—namely, they feel that there are too many potential circumstances in which there might be unintended consequences. That is not all to do with the fact that the tax is a new one and there is no data to fall back on. There are serious concerns about the implications and how the Adam Smith principles might apply. I know that you cannot answer from a policy perspective—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
Okay.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Liz Smith
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 11 November 2025
Liz Smith
Two budgets ago, when there was considerable criticism from business and industry, one of their concerns was that, within the economy portfolio, there are quite a lot of enterprise schemes that help with the development of skills, which are essential to boosting both the labour market and productivity. Those things are very real to the potential of the Scottish economy, and it seems strange—I say it again—to have cuts or underspends at this particular juncture, given the urgency of ensuring that the labour market is as buoyant as possible, that productivity is improving and that we get some benefit from economic growth.
