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 775 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
I do not agree with that. A great deal of the spend by the bill team has been on co-design. Perhaps John Paul would like to say a little bit more about the work of the national care service team of civil servants.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
You will understand that we substantially changed our approach to the national care service. The original bill, as introduced, is no longer happening, but it would have involved lots of staff changing employer, and the Government would have had direct control. We changed to a shared accountability agreement, but, as you will understand, last year, the shared accountability agreement broke down, with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities publicly stating that it no longer supported that.
This was not my intended approach. I believed that this level of substantial change required to be underpinned by legislation in order to deliver the change that people need to see. However, our partners—in local authorities, for example—have persuaded me that the changes can be made, and nobody is saying that the status quo needs to persist. What local authorities have told me loudly and clearly is that they can deliver the change that we want to see without legislation and without structural reform, so that is what we are doing. The work is continuing, as you say, on a voluntary basis, but a great deal of the current work on improving social care sits outside the bill.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
I would disagree with the premise of that question. I do not think that anything went wrong with the co-design. It has been absolutely vital for the Government to listen to individuals who access and work in social care and to learn from them about the changes that they want to see.
One challenge that we have faced over the course of the bill is that there are strong stakeholder interests, not all of which are aligned. When the decision was made by local authorities to walk away from the shared accountability agreement, I said repeatedly that the voices that we were not hearing in the public debate at that time were those of the people who were accessing care.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
That is why we have begun work already with the providers and stakeholders who will be involved in delivering that commitment, and it is why the introduction is being phased over 10 years. We recognise that there is a need to build capacity between now and when it is fully delivered.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
Lee Flannigan can come in if I do not cover this adequately, but our trajectory is based on our experience with the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016. There were similar concerns when that legislation was introduced that there would be huge pent-up demand and that delivery would require far greater capacity early on, but that was not what actually happened.
There are challenges. Carers often do not identify as carers, and they struggle to find out what is available to them. We are fairly confident in our trajectory, because of our experience with the 2016 act.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
Not in its whole sense.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
I think that it is reasonable. The bill has been substantially refined since its introduction and, at each step of the way, we have provided fresh financial information. I think that it is reasonable and allows scrutiny by the Parliament.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
Yes, some significant areas will be delivered by secondary legislation. There will be some areas of which the final format has not yet been decided.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
Is the team still the same size, John Paul?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Care Reform (Scotland) Bill: Financial Summary
Meeting date: 27 May 2025
Maree Todd
Yes, that is fine—I will certainly provide you with more information. As I have said nearly every time that I have been in front of the committee, the national care service team works with social care as well, and, at the moment, we collectively spend £6.1 billion per year on social care.
