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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 2881 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
John Mason
None of it—so that £12 million has come entirely from the NHS budget.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
John Mason
Although a military secret would, I presume, still not be revealed under a public inquiry, would it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
John Mason
Ms Morgan, given what you have said, do you think that the public have become less tolerant over the decades? Is it the case that, whereas, in the past, we just accepted that a mistake had been made, nowadays, there is more of a desire to blame somebody, to get revenge or to dig into things more?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
John Mason
That goes back to the terms of reference that are set at the beginning, does it not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
John Mason
Whereas in the NHS, for example, a surgeon simply has to work with the equipment and the staff that are available to them.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
John Mason
I would like to ask you about the figures that you quoted in your submission. You said that it has cost NSS £3.1 million to respond various inquiries since 2021-22. Later in your submission, you mentioned a figure of £9 million for legal services. Is the £9 million the amount that you were refunded and the £3 million the amount that you were not refunded? Could you explain that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 3 June 2025
John Mason
That is fair.
One of the things that the 2005 act says—in section 17, I think—is that the judge or whoever is leading the inquiry must avoid “unnecessary cost”.
I will start with Ms Morgan this time. You have been involved in a few inquiries. Do you have a view on that issue? Do you think that public inquiries are avoiding unnecessary costs, or do you think that unnecessary costs are being incurred?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 May 2025
John Mason
I take the point in your previous argument that, if it was, say, a one-off cost of £27 million or £30 million or thereabouts, it would be a one-off cost, and we could look at that spread over the years. The other argument is that £27 million just to rearrange the furniture is quite a lot of money, and that would be a factor in my deciding whether I support the bill at stage 1. I opposed Liz Smith’s Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill, on what was basically the same amount of money—£30 million.
To go into some of the detail of that, I note that the largest part seems to be pension. My understanding is that TUPE—the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations—protects staff who are transferring to another organisation so that they do not lose out, but the argument here seems to be that the staff moving should get a much better pension. I do not think that TUPE insists on them having a much better pension; it insists on them not losing out. In fact, pensions under TUPE is a bit of a grey area.
Has the Government gone through all the options? Does it have to be under TUPE? Do they have to move into the same pension fund?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 May 2025
John Mason
That suggests that the Government would be involved and that it might put a cap on the one-off cost or the transfer cost.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 28 May 2025
John Mason
Again, I am on board for some of those things. Every witness at the Finance and Public Administration Committee tells us that, if we spend £1 now, we will save £10 in 10 years’ time. That is all very well, but we have to find the £1 today, and you are asking us to find maybe £30 million.
You said that it is not for us to know at this stage, but I disagree. The financial memorandum is meant to provide the best estimate, but you are saying that it is not for us to know at this stage. Some of the preparatory work is about whether the SFC will have one scheme or two schemes, and we know that some staff will definitely transfer if the change goes ahead. I accept that we do not know about some areas, but I think that more work could have been done before we got to this stage.
I will move on to some other points. Earlier, financial sustainability was mentioned, as well as whether the SFC will be able to require data. It was suggested that the SFC might be able to require data in the future.
Why did the SFC not pick up the problems at Dundee university and perhaps those at other universities? Was it because it did not have the powers or because it was not using the powers that it had?
