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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 2972 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
You have covered some of the things that I was going to ask about with that line of questioning about aligning economic growth spending with skills gaps. Andy Witty has given the example of welders, which also came up when we visited the advanced manufacturing district. Are we clear where the skills gaps are and are young people clear about that? It is all very well for us—or for universities and colleges to know—but young people need to know in order to go for the right places for the jobs.
That takes me on to universities. Scottish Enterprise talked about graduates who are in non-graduate jobs, which says to me that we are sending too many young people to university—we should be sending some of them to train as welders instead of to do degrees. I will ask Andy Witty to respond.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
Do the schools know where the gaps are?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
Do you accept that some young people choose a university subject that they quite like the idea of, although they have no idea whether there will be a job at the end of it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
It might be unfair to ask you too much about that sector. We got the impression earlier that planning is resistant to modern techniques. Some planning departments like to keep houses looking like they have always looked. Have you picked up on that at all?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
It has been mentioned that some issues are UK wide and some are specific to Scotland. The Scottish Fiscal Commission says that
“the UK-wide higher demand”
for disability benefits especially
“is because of a deterioration in health, meaning more people are eligible, and the cost-of-living pressures”
are encouraging more people to apply. Do you recognise that as a UK-wide issue? Is health getting worse?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
I agree with what you are saying and with what the Government is trying to do. The question for the committee is whether we can afford what we want to do. The SFC has talked about the fact that people in Scotland are supported more—you used the word “support”, too—and that we have promoted some of those payments more. I want us to be kind, gentle and nice, but I am left wondering whether we are going too far down that road, because we cannot afford it.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
I supported that amendment.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
I want to go back to Tom Ockendon, if I may, on the combination of housing, skills, and the shortage of workers. I realise that the SFHA does not build houses, but I presume that you have some sort of feel for it. Is the sector moving on with skills and technology as it might be? For example, I have CCG in my constituency, and it does off-site building. I get the impression that off-site building has not taken off in the way that it might have done, despite the fact that it is a nicer environment for workers to work in and it might, for example, suit older workers better than being on site. I also saw an article recently about using robots for bricklaying because we are short of bricklayers. Is the sector really moving forward in that way?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 16 September 2025
John Mason
Again, I agree with all your arguments, which are all well put. Clearly, if we can help people, then their health improves and there is not the same pressure elsewhere. However, I still wonder—as, I think, the committee does—whether we are getting the balance right in all of this. We call it capping, rationing or whatever. If people need hip replacements or want to get into a care home, they have to wait for quite a long time. The fact that there is a cap means that there is a limit to those budgets and that we can spend only so much on operations, care homes, nursing staff and all those things. However, there seems to be no cap on this budget. I understand that it is demand led, but must it increase by inflation every year, for example? I realise that, if it did not, people would be less well off, but would that not be one way of controlling the expense?
12:30Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
John Mason
How do we overcome the risks? Is it simply by just moving very slowly?