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 975 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Elena Whitham
We are short of time, but do the other witnesses have anything brief to add?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Elena Whitham
That is very helpful. Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Elena Whitham
I want to take us back to the charter of rights, which has been mentioned. We know that the national collaborative worked for quite a long time with people with lived and living experience and with partner agencies to draw up the “National Collaborative Charter of Rights For People Affected by Substance Use” and its toolkit, which was launched this past December. The charter draws from international guidelines on human rights and drug policy that set out best practice as identified by the UN. We anticipate that the proposed Scottish human rights bill, which will perhaps be introduced not in this session but further down the line, will underpin the charter. I am wondering how the bill that we are looking at today will intersect with the charter of rights. Could they work together? Is there any way that the charter of rights, as intended, could strengthen the bill?
In the absence of rights holders being able to realise their rights, we are seeing a gap in service provision for individuals. Can the witnesses speak to how those two things will interact with each other and how they could possibly strengthen each other?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Elena Whitham
What is social work’s perspective?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Elena Whitham
Unless any of the other witnesses has any thoughts on that, I will stop there. Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 March 2025
Elena Whitham
That is slightly contrary to your written submission. At this stage, does the Royal College of Psychiatrists think that that does not need to be strengthened in the bill as drafted?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Elena Whitham
Thank you. That is helpful. The bill allows for significant changes to be made to EIA and habitats regulations by way of regulations using the negative procedure, as the committee understands it. Those changes might have significant policy implications for how the regimes operate. Why did the Government not consider the affirmative procedure to be more appropriate for a wider range of circumstances under the powers in part 2?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Elena Whitham
Therefore, at this point, are officials content that the balance has been struck correctly and that the affirmative procedure will be used for the most appropriate occasions?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Elena Whitham
When you responded to my colleague Emma Harper’s question about the changes that the bill makes in relation to the creation and approving of deer management plans, you mentioned the importance of collaborative working across landholdings. What regard was paid to the very different issues that are experienced in the lowlands of Scotland—the area that I represent—in relation to deer management, where there are a lot of much smaller landholdings and different moving parts? There is perhaps not as much collaboration happening, the number of stalkers is being reduced, and there are no community larders. What thought went into how we ensure that we have robust deer management in the lowlands of Scotland, given that it is a very different situation but one that still needs to be addressed?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]
Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Elena Whitham
So, at this point in time, you are content that it will be an iterative process because of the long lead-in time before we will see the results and that the best way of dealing with that will be through secondary legislation rather than through the bill.
