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 1479 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 10 February 2026
Liz Smith
Thank you, minister, for the engagement with me on this matter last week. To what extent has the Scottish Government carried out any study of the behavioural changes that have happened since the bill was published? Are you aware of some of the behavioural changes that are likely to take effect in relation to the exemptions that Michelle Thomson is talking about?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 10 February 2026
Liz Smith
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 10 February 2026
Liz Smith
The amendments in this group are supported by Homes for Scotland. Just as important, they seek to give effect to paragraphs 146 and 147 of our stage 1 report, in which we recommended that the proceeds of the levy should be used only for cladding remediation. I do not accept the minister’s reasoning that a restriction in the bill would add to costs and complexity.
As colleagues will recall, we discussed at length the importance of ensuring that the levy will fund only the cladding remediation programme and that it will be time limited through the sunset clause that several members have referred to. Being clear about the use of the proceeds is, I think, imperative if the bill is to be improved—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Legacy Issues (Finance)
Meeting date: 10 February 2026
Liz Smith
Professor Bell, I want to ask you about the fiscal framework in relation to what you said about difficult timescales. I think that we are all agreed that the current situation has not been satisfactory. I am commenting not on what the fiscal framework says, but on the timescale, which has been knocked about like a political football from time to time. Do you feel that having clarity about the timescale and perhaps reforming the fiscal framework would help?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Liz Smith
Like Mr Mason and the convener, I understand the logic of keeping the tax in line with the aggregates levy in the first year because of the complexity of the BGA adjustment. I get that. However, if it is the case that people in the sector are arguing, for the reasons that the convener set out, that they might want the tax to increase in years to come, is that not also a reason for considering different rates in different parts of Scotland? The logic is that, if there are different elasticities of demand between England and Scotland, there will also be different elasticities of demand between different parts of Scotland. Will the Government examine that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Liz Smith
On that point, it would be helpful if the Government considered that, because it strikes me that the fund is being closed largely for economic reasons, whereas those who have expressed their concerns to the committee are looking at the social impact—particularly if, as the convener said, their projects relate to youth engagement in the local community and so on. Those projects have a very important impact when it comes to stimulating community engagement, particularly if they are in a disadvantaged area. Losing them is a potential problem, so it would be very helpful if the Government was to consider introducing a replacement fund in order to ensure that infrastructure provision is not lost altogether.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Liz Smith
I am not sure that I will watch them online.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Liz Smith
Good morning. When it comes to making difficult policy choices in the very tight fiscal circumstances that we all face, do you agree that the emphasis should be on the policies that deliver the best outcomes and that there should be less emphasis on the policies that do not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Liz Smith
I do not doubt that, cabinet secretary. I am sure that it is a difficult job, particularly just now. However, the Scottish Fiscal Commission—which is clearly being very diplomatic about this, as it usually is—is not confident that some of the statistics that the Scottish Government has presented to it match up with its own analysis. Mairi Spowage told us that, when it came to college funding, she was not at all clear about where the specific lines were in that portfolio. We had David Bell saying that he was “completely confused” about how the fiscal sustainability delivery plan closes the fiscal gap. Is it not an embarrassment to the Scottish Government that there are experts in their field who do not feel that there is sufficient transparency in the Scottish budget?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Liz Smith
I am just putting it to you that, despite what you say about the ABR and so on, our experts who are scrutinising the budget are being very clear in all their comments. It is not just one person saying this; our senior economic analysts are all saying the same thing—that, as we scrutinise the budget, there is confusion over where the budget spend is and, therefore, over where the best results are. Also, let us be honest, cabinet secretary: your budget speech had to have two corrections made to it, which were welcome and made quickly. There was an issue about the A96 and an issue about the provision for school swimming.
The on-going lack of transparency makes it difficult not only for the committee but for the public to understand which lines of spending will best deliver the results that the Government is seeking to achieve.
