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 3261 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
John Mason
So, you are not against profit to some extent; you are against excessive profit.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
John Mason
Yes, and that does not appear in the bill or in other relevant documents yet.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
John Mason
Is there evidence, either in Scotland or in England or Wales or elsewhere, that private organisations that are run for profit give a lower level of care than charities?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
John Mason
So, in a sense, you are arguing that what happens to the profit is more important than whether there is a profit or not, and that a non-profit-distributing or charity model is better.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
John Mason
Sorry, but I think that those definitions are a key point in this.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
John Mason
I will probably explore that with other witnesses in the future.
We are dealing with the idea that the fostering agencies would definitely be a charity, whereas we would need to look at residential care a bit more. Is that a reasonable approach? Should the two be treated more similarly?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
John Mason
We will follow that up as well. Did you want to say anything on that, Sheriff Mackie?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
John Mason
Both of you mention population health and refer back to what the SFC has said, which is, broadly, that improved population health measures can improve the Scottish Government’s long-term fiscal position—I presume that that will be because more people will get back into work and so on.
Mr Robinson, from your experience, have we ever been able to improve health substantially? Can we have any optimism at all that we could do that in the future? We have problems with obesity, poor diet and lack of exercise among young people, and the issue of mental health is much higher up the agenda now, but it does not look as though we are going in the right direction.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
John Mason
Mr Sousa, in your submission, you say:
“The focus on how much is spent rather than results is as true for health as it is for social care. The latter being a particularly interesting case in Scotland, where government spending per person is around 50% higher than in England, yet little evidence exists of differences in outcomes.”
Are you really saying that there has been no improvement?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 September 2025
John Mason
Yes. Does it need to be fundamentally changed? There was not a major review of it last time. We need to focus on how our economy is growing in comparison with economic growth in the rest of the UK, which is largely influenced by London and the south-east. My personal feeling is that we can never compete with London and the south-east. We never have been able to do so. Therefore—this might be a political question, in which case you cannot answer it—do we need a fundamental review of the fiscal framework?
