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 2881 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Fiscal Sustainability Report)
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
I think that Finland tried to give people an incentive—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Fiscal Sustainability Report)
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
I imagine that the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee looks at that issue, so I will leave that there just now.
What can we learn from other countries? There is some uncertainty about why life expectancy has not kept increasing here but, as you said, has increased in Japan. From an article that I read recently, it seems that Poland has an even worse problem than we do with regard to its ageing population and the fact that people are leaving the country, and it will not have enough people for its army. The situation is similar in Germany and Russia. Where are we in the whole scheme of things, and are there lessons that we should be learning from other countries, such as Japan?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Fiscal Sustainability Report)
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
I just think that spending on health will keep going up.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Fiscal Sustainability Report)
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
It is clear from all your papers that if the UK makes a major change in the way that it is doing things—and borrows less, presumably—that will have a big impact on Scotland. I am picking up that you do not know when that might happen and that it is very difficult to predict when that might happen.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
I still wonder whether it is possible to plan ahead. Does there need to be more political will in order to do that? For example, the plan for pay was to have a 3 per cent increase for one year with a 9 per cent increase over three years, yet I believe that, within a month or two of that decision, the national health service was offered a 4.25 per cent increase for this year. Are you saying that the Government should somehow be more tied in to the longer-term plan? That would mean that the Government would just say no to a short-term pay increase demand and that that would be that, even if there were strikes.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
Fair enough. The convener touched on the capacity of MSPs and committees. We have had the problem that committees seem to leave it to the Finance and Public Administration Committee to look after the budget. Do you think that we should be trying to change that scenario? If so, do you have any suggestions for how we can get the committees to look more at the finances?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Fiscal Sustainability Report)
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
Michelle Thomson mentioned debt. That seems to be a difference between the UK’s sustainability—or lack of it—and Scotland’s, because debt is not an issue for us; we have only to cut our spending.
The stark figures show that, at the moment, the UK’s public debt is 98 per cent of GDP and that it will potentially go up to 274 per cent. Is there a psychological level at which the UK Government will have to do something? I would have thought that 100 per cent of GDP would have quite a psychological impact and that getting to 100 per cent is quite a big deal. Can you forecast—or does the OBR forecast—that when we get to, say, 150 per cent, the UK will suddenly change direction? Is it a gradual thing?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Fiscal Sustainability Report)
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
I want to touch on one final area. I do not see much in the report about preventative spend. In one sense, all health spending is preventative, because spending on health improves people’s health, which prevents illness. However, is there an issue with how we spend the health money? If we put more into general practice and primary care and cut the money going to hospitals a bit, would that have a benefit in the long run? Have you considered that sort of issue?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Fiscal Sustainability Report)
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
Would I be right in saying that, despite financial incentives, no country has succeeded in increasing the birth rate?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Budget Process in Practice
Meeting date: 29 April 2025
John Mason
I may go over some of the ground that the convener has already been over. The assumption is that it is a good thing to have a medium-term financial strategy and plans for the future. For example, the Scottish Fiscal Commission and the Office for Budget Responsibility look 50 years ahead. As has been said, we must balance the budget every year, but unexpected issues can come up. An example is the UK Government giving public sector workers a higher pay increase, which we must follow. Are you convinced that there is value in having a five-year plan?
