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 1552 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
Good morning. You sat in on the previous evidence session, so you will have heard everything that was said. It was difficult to discern what the NHS thinks is the problem, but I think that we got to it. My reading is that the NHS is saying that there is a gap between services and that some cases are no one’s responsibility, so they fall to the police. What do you think about that?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
It does, but there is a point that I perhaps did not understand correctly. When I pressed the witnesses in the first evidence session, they explained that there are two competing models of mental health: when there is a diagnosis of a mental health disorder and when there is emotional distress. That is how I would categorise it. They said that the gap relates to emotional distress. I felt that they said that, although emotional distress is not a policing issue, it is not an NHS issue either. So, it is no one’s issue.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
In answer to Sharon Dowey, you talked about second and third-line managers and risk positives. What do you mean by that? Do you mean that, when the call first comes in, whether it is through 999 or 101—I do not know where they come from—line managers could make different decisions to divert it?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
We have heard about all the work that is going on and is needed, and that some progress has been made, but you think that it is not enough and that Police Scotland’s management needs to make different decisions in the first place.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
From reading the submissions to the committee, the situation is exactly as you just said: we will soon be going in the other direction and training police officers to do some of that other work.
A final question just occurred to me, on something that I have dealt with myself. In 101 cases, where a person is in distress and they are not answering the door, the police officer would need to attend in case the door needs to be broken down. Is that the kind of risk-assessment decision that you are talking about? I see the need for a police officer to attend that call, because no one else has the authority to kick down the door. Would that be right?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
David Threadgold talked about second-line and third-line managers making different decisions. He talked about them being risk positive. Do you agree with that? What is the barrier to that?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
Good morning. You have answered Sharon Dowey’s question, and mine was on roughly the same area. You have removed those two offences because the police are not using fixed penalties for them. Is that right?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
Oh, right. I presumed that it was from 2004—
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
Is there a policy such that two years is the time after which you would review something? I honestly thought that you would say that those offences had not been used in 20 years—and I could see that—but in two years’ time—
09:45
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Policing and Mental Health
Meeting date: 18 February 2026
Pauline McNeill
Why does that matter? If it is an NHS issue regardless, when the police officer takes the person to the NHS facility where they can best be treated, why would that police officer not simply say, “Well, we’ve done our job, so it’s over to you”? Why would that not be the case in every circumstance? You are saying that you think that the police have some responsibility, at that point, to wait to find out what the diagnosis is.
