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 1804 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023-24”
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Jamie Greene
Good morning. I will start by looking at an area of the report that we have not covered, which is Scotland’s overall economic performance relative to that in the rest of the United Kingdom. For your information, that sits on pages 19 to 23 of the AGS report.
I will start with a question for the Scottish Government. Perhaps you can talk me through exhibit 3, which is the table on page 20. According to the Auditor General, between 2017 and 2023, the cumulative additional tax paid by Scottish taxpayers due to tax policy differences was £3.36 billion. The net increase to the Scottish budget is displayed not far away from that figure, and it is only £629 million. Why is that the case?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023-24”
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Jamie Greene
What do you mean by “behaviours”? I am just getting my head around that. It is not a trick question, by the way; I am just trying to understand the table.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023-24”
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Jamie Greene
But we also have high earners, and 0.8 per cent of all Scottish taxpayers pay 18 per cent of all Scottish tax, so we already have a significant, if small, group of people who pay a huge amount of tax. Surely the Government’s ambition should not be to increase that.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023-24”
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Jamie Greene
What is the Government’s position on the Fraser of Allander Institute’s Scottish business monitor? I presume that you have read that as part of your analysis of tax behaviour. Its last quarterly report, showed that 34 per cent of Scottish businesses reported that tax divergence was having a “fair” or “significant” effect on their business, including on their ability to recruit and retain people, on demands on wage pressures, and on an overall perception of Scotland’s competitiveness and inward investment. The number of businesses that felt that was significantly higher in particular sectors. You talked about the financial sector, but let us look at the construction sector, where nearly one third of businesses said that higher taxes had a significant effect on their ability to recruit and retain people in Scotland.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023-24”
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Jamie Greene
Data is key.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023-24”
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Jamie Greene
That is a very long answer that has not answered my question. You are using completely different language from that in the Audit Scotland report, but I can only use the language that the Auditor General has used. I appreciate that you are explaining the question.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023-24”
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Jamie Greene
That is really helpful.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Jamie Greene
I do not sit on the committee week in and week out any more, but I hear what the member says. We should bear in mind the fact that this is a victims bill. The point of changing from criminal justice reform to a victims bill was that the Government understood that there was a need to refocus on some technical changes to the judicial system, some of which are substantial. Equally, there was an opportunity to improve practices within the justice system, including the parole process, which seems to be a major and common theme that comes from victims. I therefore do not think that any of this is new.
I do not know the reasons why the committee did not take evidence on parole, and I do not know why the Parole Board for Scotland has not engaged with the committee on the bill. That is for the committee to understand.
At the end of the day, this is the only bill that is on the table at the moment. I could come back in the next year with a bill that is focused solely on reforming parole, but I do not think that the committee or the Parliament would have the time for it. This is the only bill in town at the moment, and that is why I am trying to use this bill to do what I want to do.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Jamie Greene
I know—I am sorry. I hope that, if the committee agrees that this is an important issue, it could take further evidence ahead of stage 3. That would be useful and important.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Jamie Greene
That is a very good point. There are ways and means to do this. We have to put faith in some of the pre-hearing reports that are considered. We know that justice partners will be engaging with the prisoner in advance of a hearing, whether that be SPS staff, clinical psychologists or a third party. I am sure that everyone will be aware—perhaps off the back of the recent television show “Adolescence”—of the key role that is played by someone assessing an individual who has committed a very grave crime and that there are ways and means to elicit an understanding of what underpins that person’s attitude towards the crime that they have committed.
I still believe that it is possible for someone who has communication difficulties or additional needs, for example, to demonstrate remorse. More important, I believe that there should be a moral obligation to do so. However, if they are unable to do so, the proposed amendment would not prohibit their release, nor would it ensure that they are kept in prison; it would simply be one of the factors that must be taken into account during a hearing. That is what campaigners are asking for. Some campaigners are asking to go a lot further than that, and I accept that doing so might be difficult. I am interested to hear what the cabinet secretary has to say on that.
I do not sit in those hearings and I do not know all the information that the Parole Board has in front of it, but I am pretty sure—I have some faith—that the members at a hearing should and will request access to all information that they deem necessary. That might involve extra support being provided in those very particular scenarios.
