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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Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
I understand. To reflect that back—these are my words, so if I am not reflecting it correctly, do challenge me—you would argue that the focus on wellbeing under section 32 is a red herring. It is the wrong end of the telescope. Police Scotland would say that the wellbeing objective can be achieved through day-to-day operation and that it is about the outcome, rather than saying that wellbeing has been part of day-to-day operation. The chief constable wants to make it an outcome, rather than a day-to-day thing.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
Before we move to questions from Sharon Dowey, I note that we are starting to run out of time. I ask colleagues to be tight on their questions and witnesses to be similarly concise.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
Fulton, can I ask you to start again? Your connection is really bad. You can start the question again, but we will have to move on if you remain unclear.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
Do you have another question, Fulton, or are you done?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
I am grateful for that—I appreciate your consideration.
That concludes our evidence taking for this morning.
For committee members and for your own purposes, ACC Paton, I note that the committee will seek a written update after this meeting—as we discussed with Mr Threadgold earlier—on progress on tracking whether work-related stress and mental health issues contribute to cases of police suicide. That subject was explored in the session that you attended last year, but the data was not being tracked at that time. We will also want to know what improvements have been made to the duty-of-care system for officers and staff. We will be in touch about that following this session.
That concludes our marathon evidence taking this morning. I thank all the witnesses who have attended, as well as everyone else who has attended and asked questions. We will now move into private session.
12:47
Meeting continued in private until 12:59.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
Our next item of business is an oral evidence session on an affirmative instrument. We are joined by the Minister for Victims and Community Safety. I also welcome, from the Scottish Government, Robert Wyllie, policy lead for safer communities, and Nicola Guild, from the legal directorate. I refer colleagues to paper 1, and I intend to allow up to 15 minutes for the evidence session.
Minister, I invite you to make some opening remarks to set the scene for this Scottish statutory instrument.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
I am grateful. I have a couple of questions, after which I will open up the questioning to colleagues.
As you have just detailed, minister, the instrument would add section 38(1) offences to the fixed-penalty notice scheme. That would create an overlap with the common-law offence of breach of the peace, which is already part of the FPN regime. Given that overlap, what evidence can you adduce that adding section 38 offences is the right thing to do? How will that overlap be dealt with in practice?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
Section 38 does something that breach of the peace currently does, but breach of the peace is currently part of the fixed-penalty notice regime. By adding in the section 38(1) offence to the regime, you would have two legislative processes, in effect—although dealing with breach of the peace at common law would not involve applying legislation—that amount to the same thing. You would have two tracks running, would you not, for the same end?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
I have a further question, but I will bring in Sharon Dowey now to ensure that all colleagues get appropriate time.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Liam Kerr
As no other members have any questions, I want to clarify something, minister. In response to my second question at the start of the meeting, you told me—I am paraphrasing what I think that I heard—that raising the fine from £40 to £70 is not about providing a deterrent. However, the Scottish Government’s policy note on the SSI states in bullet point 3 that
“without revalorisation it no longer provides the proportionate deterrent originally envisaged by Parliament.”
That suggests that the raise is about providing a deterrent. Will you clarify that?
