Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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Displaying 1311 contributions

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Meeting of the Parliament

Women’s State Pensions (Compensation)

Meeting date: 21 January 2025

Marie McNair

I certainly have read the report. I thought that Paul O’Kane was standing up to apologise to our WASPI women and explain why your party is refusing to pay compensation to them. He absolutely did not do that; in effect, all I got was political spin and an aggressive, shouty man.

To move on, I call on colleagues opposite to get off your knees and honestly push for full and fair compensation for these women.

Recent figures show that the change to pension age affected more than 13,000 women in my constituency. Liz Daly, a co-ordinator of WASPI Scotland, is one of the women who were affected. Liz was expecting to retire at 60 in December 2015. In the summer of 2014, her husband took ill and was hospitalised for months. When he was discharged with a walking frame and a feeding tube, Liz took compassionate leave and later reduced her working hours to care for her husband. During a work meeting, she found out that she would not be able to retire at 60 after all, but by that point she had already reduced her hours and the other half of her post had been filled. All that had happened without her knowing that the pension age had changed. Liz was faced with an impossible situation and undue stress while taking care of her sick husband, and when her husband died, in 2018, she was only earning half pay.

Choices were removed for Liz and many other women. Had they known about the change, they could have prepared and made different choices and decisions. Liz’s story is heartbreaking, but it is important to hear. These real women have faced a terrible injustice while already being at a disadvantage. Historically, they have earned lower pay on average during their working lives or experienced interrupted careers because of caring for children or acting as unpaid carers. They have also had less state pension entitlement than men, due to earning less than the national insurance lower earning limit and spending less time in the labour market. As is noted in a policy briefing from Age Scotland, a 2024 report by the Pensions Policy Institute found that, by their late 50s, women’s pension wealth is equivalent to less than two thirds of men’s.

Those women were robbed of their pension and there is simply no justification for the Labour Party to deny them compensation. Unfortunately, time is not on their side. Sadly many WASPI women have passed away without receiving compensation. Since the decision on 19 December—I am sure that this is the figure—3,500 women have sadly passed away. That is absolutely shocking.

WASPI women have shown determination and courage, but Labour has absolutely forgotten about them. WASPI women have spent considerable time advocating for change and raising awareness of their plight, and they do not deserve to be betrayed in this way by the Labour Party. They must be compensated. The SNP is on the WASPI women’s side, and we will remain so.

Labour has called for a change of direction, but it is, unfortunately, already giving the people of Scotland one. This is one of the most right-wing Labour Governments in history, and that is saying something. The current Government makes Gordon Brown look like Fidel Castro. I understand why a former Labour MSP has said this about Keir Starmer:

“There’s something deeply wrong and sinister about someone who takes apparent delight in making children, pensioners and the low paid poorer and their lives more difficult—it is immoral, shameful and disgusting.”

That is from one of your Labour guys. I do not get that one, but there we go.

What reasonable person could disagree that Labour’s treatment of WASPI women has been and continues to be disgusting? Pre-election, Labour members called for WASPI women to be compensated and posed for photos with them, but post-election, they say that compensating WASPI women is an unreasonable burden on the taxpayer.

Only one Government in the UK stands with WASPI women, and that is the SNP Government. Despite Labour’s student politics shenanigans, the WASPI women know that. They know that Labour has betrayed them, and they will never forget it.

Meeting of the Parliament

Women’s State Pensions (Compensation)

Meeting date: 21 January 2025

Marie McNair

Last week, I spoke in my colleague Kenneth Gibson’s members’ business debate on a motion that called for compensation for the WASPI women. It was important to speak in firm support of the WASPI women and to have WASPI women in the chamber, including some of my constituents. I welcome them here again today.

I said last week, and I will say again today, that,

“Despite the ombudsman’s report being clear on the failures of the UK Government ... and being crystal clear that compensation is owed,”—[Official Report, 15 January 2025; c 102.]

Labour’s policy is to ignore that. That position contradicts what Labour said to get elected in 2024. A conscious choice was made to use these women to get elected, only to abandon them straight after the election.

Labour promised change, but all the WASPI women got was betrayal and deception. When the Labour Government can promise tax breaks to the wealthy but not compensation for WASPI women, it is clear how much it values pensioners. It is a question not of money but of Labour’s priorities.

In its amendment, so-called Scottish Labour attempts to wipe away any notion that it wants full compensation for women. In his speech, Paul O’Kane spoke about options. What options? A handshake? A medal? A “New Labour” mug? Some Marks and Spencer vouchers? It is complete and utter nonsense.